Gabriel Nunes | Game-changer from the Cerrado

Gabriel Nunes, this month's featured grower, is a third-generation coffee grower from the Cerrado Mineiro region. Gabriel's farm is located just outside of Patrocínio, Minas Gerais. For many years the Nunes family has had a reputation for producing high-quality coffee, but Gabriel's Cup of Excellence win in 2017 was a game-changer for the Cerrado Mineiro region. Despite being one of Brazil's largest coffee regions, no grower there had ever won the competition. Gabriel's victory opened the door, and since then two other Cerrado growers, Ismael Andrade and Danilo Barbosa, have won the competition. Cerrado growers are now mainstays in the competition finals, including Gabriel, who this year landed an eighth-place finish. Brazil produces around 8.5 billion pounds of coffee a year—a third of global production—so regularly finishing among the top is an awesome feat. We sat down with Gabriel to discuss the importance of his COE victory, how the paradigm of coffee production has changed in terms of genetics and processing, and the naturally processed Gesha that Casa Brasil Coffees is currently featuring.

Your COE victory was a game-changer for the Cerrado Region. Before your victory, a farm from the Cerrado Mineiro region had never won the COE, and farms rarely placed in the top ten. Your victory opened the gates, and we have seen several Cerrado winners and many high-placing coffees, including your eighth-place finish this year. Can you tell us a little about that COE coffee and how it helped open the doors for others?

The coffee was the result of a very well-developed plan we followed. I took a Q Processing course from the CQI. It was the first Q Processing class in Brazil, just before the harvest that year. It really inspired me and helped to open my mind about post-harvest processing and different things that we could do here on the farm. So, we started trying several things, including a double-fermentation coffee, which was very unusual at the time. This coffee turned out nice and pleased everyone, and it still holds the record price in dollars for coffee sold in Brazil's COE to this day. The win helped open many doors for the farm internationally. And, in practical terms, the win made it financially possible for us to build our laboratory, office, and the employee cantina that had wanted for many years. It also motivated the team even more in our pursuit to produce unique specialty coffees, to always be on the forefront, and to continue to compete in and win competitions. This year's coffee was the result of a specific fermentation trial that really turned out nice. But, to put it simply, the COE win changed our lives.

You were raised "under a coffee tree," as people say here. How has coffee production in the Cerrado changed in your lifetime in terms of production methods and production goals?

We usually say, here on the farm, that the passion for farming comes from father to son, and it’s a beautiful experience: a succession that is being built together. I brought some technical innovations from the university. My father already had tons of experience, so it is a partnership that works very well. What I think is changing is that we are trying to plant cultivars that are more resistant to diseases and pests, reducing the use of pesticides, and changing from thinking about chemicals to treat to thinking about biology to prevent and empower—how can we empower the plant and soil proactively? We have been making compost here for almost four years, and we greatly reduced our dependence on external fertilizers [CB Note for the 2022 harvest, this reduction was around 50%]. We also see that there are several international problems, such as the current war, that can impact us greatly, so today, we are trying to manage the farm more sustainably and as much as possible to control our own destiny, and our production methods are evolving a lot.

You employ genetics extensively on your farm. What role do you see genetics playing in the next decade?
Here on the farm, we don't have a seedling nursery, but we buy seedlings from the nursery of a friend, who is our partner. (Besides being a friend, he is fully certified, guaranteeing not only germination but that we can be certain about what we are planting.) And I think that genetics is our base; it is this search that makes what we do different in coffee farming. If we use these more resistant, tolerant varieties, we can reduce the use of pesticides and insecticides. Besides the economic savings for us, genetics is what is also making a difference in the quality of the beverage. And this is quite noticeable. We always use genetics to define the cultivar that is doing best in each particular lot on the farm. For example, Arara, Paradiso, Catucai, and Bourbon all behave differently on different parts of the farm.

How about processing? The Cerrado Mineiro region is known for its very dry harvest season. How does that impact the processing decisions you make?
The Cerrado region of Minas Gerais is the first Brazilian region to get the Denomination of Origin designation. This was a milestone for us as it defined the municipalities where the Cerrado region is located. While all the coffee produced in this region has the potential of receiving the Denomination of Origin, whether or not you achieve the quality to get the DO designation is really defined by the choices and actions of the growers. And, of course, we work within the context of the climate of the Cerrado Mineiro, a region that has consistency because it is very dry every year during the harvest. While the climate is nice because of the lack of rain—it’s very dry and hot—we also must do some things to reduce the drying rate to avoid losing quality. So, along with the different processing methods we employ, such as various fermentations, we also try to slow down the drying process using shade cover and the volcano method to dry the coffee more slowly.