Meet the Grower: Francisco Guimarães
September’s featured microlot comes to us from Francisco Guimarães of Fazenda Lavrinha in Brazil’s Cerrado Mineiro region. We first met Francisco during one of his visits to Austin where he spent a summer studying English and learning about the Texas coffee scene. In 2018, we were among the first roasters to bring Guimarães family coffees to the U.S., and we are proud to continue our partnership for the 2021 harvest. Read below to learn a little more about Francisco and his farm and check out some photos from our recent trip there.
CB: Tell us a little about yourself and how you got started in specialty coffee.
FG: I am a Law graduate and also a Technologist in coffee production. I am a producer's son and have been around agriculture my whole life. We started with specialty coffee when we started growing coffee in 2010.
CB: Tell us a little about your farm, Fazenda Lavrinha, and your family's history in agriculture.
FG: Quintas de Guimarães coffee is produced on the Lavrinha farm in the city of Serra do Salitre in the Cerrado region of Minas Gerais. Our farm is at an average altitude of 970 meters and in a unique terroir suited for the production of extraordinary coffees. Our family has been in the region for about 180 years and is legendary. We work hard on the land so that we can feed the world by producing soy, corn, cotton, wheat, sorghum, coffee, beans, and cattle.
CB: What makes Cerrado coffee unique, and what are the attributes of a great Cerrado coffee?
FG: Cerrado is the best region to produce coffee as it has well-defined seasons and incredible terroir and soil for coffee production. The world comes to the Cerrado to seek high-quality coffee in large volumes. Our typical characteristics are chocolate, caramel and nuts, but with our post-harvest work we are often surprised by fruity and floral attributes.
CB: What coffee varieties do you grow on the farm, and what processing methods do you use?
FG: Varieties: Catuaí 62, Catuaí 144, Guará, Arara, Paraíso, Catiguá, Topázio , IAC 125 RN.
Processes: Fully Washed, Natural, Pulped Natural, Anaerobic Fermentation.
CB: Which is your favorite?
FG: Topázio and Paraíso. Fully washed because it's clean, balanced, and sweet.
CB: Can you talk a little bit about this year's harvest? What challenges did you face? What successes did you find? What lessons did you learn?
FG: It was a great crop for us, with high quality and high production. We had a terrible frost that destroyed 70% of our area, but we are confident that we will continue the fight to produce coffee for all you coffee lovers. Always improving year after year shows us that our team is on the right path. Life is too short to drink bad coffee :)
