Joel’s Blog
Visit Luis Adauto, Brazilian Coffee Producer of the Year in 2007, and he may just start digging.

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the death of legendary Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at various interpretations of one of his most famous works, Bachiana No. 5

For the sake of simplicity, I here reinforce the stereotype that all producers like country music (or at least all those from whom we bought coffee). Probably not true; however, probably not far from it either. The point of this entry is to give you a better sense of the […]

Etymology The Mogiana coffee region, which runs along the São Paulo side of a stretch of the São Paulo/Minas border, is named after the Companhia Mogiana Estrada de Ferro train line that ran through this area.

We commissioned a work from the children in the after-school art classes

I was able to swing by the Ouvidor bookstore in Belo Horizonte this past trip to Minas and picked up several books, including this one on Milton Nascimento. Hopefully this will make its way into English. Written by fellow Três Pontas native Maria Dolores, it traces Milton’s biography from […]

“Beans, Beans, they’re good for your field, The more you plant, the more you’ll yield. The more you yield, the less you’ll owe, So beans, beans, for every row.”

Belo Horizonte. This morning I went down to the Mercado Central. The market is quite well known, with products ranging from birds to cachaça to artisan handcrafts.

I returned to Poços de Caldas to recup some coffees, in particular to find a better lot of Serra do Bone. Until now, only one sample has met my expectations, and that was a small lot of naturals from a competition. This time I walked away happy – finding a […]

Poço Fundo. Maria Carolina won a Casa Brasil scholarship and will receive tuition and books to the Centro Educacional Cooperar (CEC) school. From left to right, CEC school director Cidinha, Maria Carolina Dias Pereira Goncalves, Lucas Dias Pereira Goncalves, Marcia de Jesus Pereira Goncalves, Geraldo Donizetti Goncalves, and Joel Shuler. […]