Brazilian Santos Coffee

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee. Much of it is used in blends, but the best known is Brazil Santos which is a good ‘middle of the road’ coffee, producing a smooth, mild flavour.

Finding the best Brazilian Santos has been a very interesting task. My ‘quest for the best’ started in 2005, when I was lucky enough to go to Brazil for 2 weeks and spend the entire time with our existing suppliers and meet and visit new ones. This visit was particularly profitable because not only did I find an excellent source of good quality Brazilian Santos but I also visited Fairtrade estates and co-operatives Fairtrade Brazilian Coopertiva Dos Cafe Regiao Lajinha Coffee and the stupendous Daterra and Monteallegre Estates.

Brazilian Santos Coffee is arguably one of the most plentiful ‘generic’ coffees in the world. Of which approximately 85% is grown by small-holders who will typically produce between 250/100kilos of parchment coffee in the single harvest period of May to July. Having purchased Santos to use in our blends and on its own since the mid-1970s I have found that the ‘trick’ is to find a miller who draws from small holders that are in the best geological and geographical areas. This way the thousands of individual lots of coffee used to make up this enormously popular ‘blended’ coffee are by default of a higher quality than those produced at lower altitude or poor-soil areas.

We use SMC Coffee from Guaxupé in Minas Gerais who are integrated into the largest coffee growers co-operative Cooxupé. Cooxupé has over 11,500 coffee growing members and also employs 2000 additional workers who produce more than 4 million 60kilo sacks every year. SMC mill their members coffee in Guaxupé and when I visited and cupped over 100 lots of small-holders coffee, I was satisfied that the 11,500 farmers who make-up this co-operative were producing across the board, quality of a type that I was happy to put my name to.