Valdir & Daniela

For our initial 2021 harvest Brazil, we have the return of a coffee that we’ve purchased for three consecutive seasons via our longest green buying partnership with Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF) in Brazil. We’ve been working over the past few years to dig a bit deeper with our purchasing model here and begin to focus on building relationships with single producers. We’ve fallen in love with the saturated red grape and chocolate heavy flavor profile we find in the Red Catuai grown by Valdir and Daniela Ferreira, and we’re excited to share it once again!

Valdir José Ferreira and his wife, Daniela, own a small farm named Sitio Joaninha, located in the Boa Vista Valley of the Caconde region. In fact, coffee from Sitio Joaninha has been included in a regional blend we offered a few years ago named Boa Vista! After many years of simply driving in from São Paulo to visit for family holidays, Valdir decided to move out to Caconde and take over his grandparents’ property.

Their farm has changed quite a bit throughout its time in the Ferreira family. Valdir recalls stories from when his mother was a child, playing in the coffee fields while her parents were working. In those days, the fields were filled with wildlife and insects, and his mother would play with the ladybirds. Valdir’s grandfather used to praise ladybirds, saying they were good for the coffee plants because they would eat harmful insects. As volume and convenience was valued more and more in the traditional coffee market, harmful agrochemicals were introduced in the area to fertilize plants and control pests. Over time, ladybirds (along with bees, butterflies, birds, and nearly all wildlife) disappeared from the farm.

In 2009, FAF approached farmers in the Boa Vista Valley about the idea of working together to grow better quality coffee and care for the environment. Valdir was all in and became an early partner in FAF’s Bobolink project, which was designed to improve coffee quality while simultaneously protecting the water, wildlife, and trees, ensuring a sustainable planet for future generations. Valdir’s mother loved the idea as well, and this is when she initially proposed renaming the farm to Sitio Joaninha - meaning ladybird in Portuguese. Each year since then, the coffee from Sitio Joaninha has significantly improved. Valdir immediately stopped using herbicides on his coffee and started cleaning the brush between the plants manually. This creates a natural compost bed, encouraging friendly insects and other organisms to return to the fields. The ladybirds are now back, and Valdir & Daniela’s children get to experience the joy of playing in coffee fields full of life.

Valdir & Daniela have been experimenting with different fermentation and drying techniques to push their coffee into a more dense, concentrated flavor profile. We think the results show in the cup, as the standard Brazilian coffee characteristics are noticeably intensified. We find that this coffee has a particularly full body, berry-forward acidity, and surprising clarity of flavor. We’re tasting: red grape, cherry, blackberry, caramel, brown sugar, almond, hazelnut, praline, nutella, milk chocolate.