This month we feature Poco Java, our Brazilian take on the classic Mocha Java, as well as the Alta Mogiana region and an award-winning coffee from Felipe Luiz Ramos de Carvalho.

BRAZILIAN BLEND: POCO JAVA

Poco Java is our Brazilian take on one of the world’s oldest blends, Mocha Java, a coffee whose two names can mean many different things: Mocha, in its various spellings, can be a Yemeni port town, a coffee variety, an espresso-based coffee drink with steamed milk and chocolate, or, here in Brazil, a peaberry coffee bean. Java is both an island in Indonesia and, over time, has become a synonym for coffee.

A coffee and tea price list from 1774. Note the first two items are “Mocha” and “Java.” Source: Reinders and Wijsenbeek, 1994

Both words derive from the geographical origin of the blend’s constituent beans: the port of Mocha in Yemen and the island of Java, which were major trading ports and two of the main sources of coffee at the time. Over time, the origin of the coffees expanded with “mocha” coffees coming from Yemen and Ethiopia, while “java” coffees were sourced from throughout Indonesia. But the name stuck, and today a typical Mocha Java blend today will likely have a fruit-forward Ethiopian coffee as its “mocha” and an earthy, syrupy, full-bodied Sumatran coffee as it’s “java.”

Our Brazilian take on the Mocha Java is our Poco Java, sourced Brazilian versions of these profiles. Our “mocha” is a natural coffee from Cup of Excellence–winning grower Gabriel Nunes, slowly dried to bring out flavors of red fruit. The “java” is a pulped natural coffee from DBarbosa, another Cup of Excellence–winning farm, and it’s roasted a bit longer to bring out dark chocolate flavors and provide a thick, creamy base.

By the way, the name “Poco Java” comes from the fact that the “mocha” component was originally sourced from the town of Poço Fundo, in the Sul de Minas region. In Portuguese, the word poco also means little or few, and since the blend has never actually contained any java, we couldn’t resist the irony of the double entendre.

REGIONAL BLEND: ALTA MOGIANA

This month, for the first time we feature the Alta Mogiana region. Located in both São Paulo and Minas Gerais, Alta Mogiana is one of the few coffee regions in Brazil to cross state lines. The region comprises 23 municipalities and is an official Geographic Indication, providing a quality guarantee and traceability through their program. More information can be found on the Alta Mogiana Specialty Coffees (AMSC) website.

The name Mogiana comes from the name of the train line that started in Campinas. And though “alta” means “high,” it doesn’t refer to altitude, but rather to the longest of three distance designations away from Campinas, coming after “baixa” and “media” Mogiana.

An 1886 map of Sao Paulo. The Mogiana line is circles in blue.

Like its northern neighbor, the Cerrado Mineiro region, Alta Mogiana benefits from a long, dry harvest season, an ideal condition both for forming sugar in the fruit and seed in the winter sun—something that lends itself to unique fermentations—and mitigating risk in drying the fruits whole. Great Alta Mogiana coffees are full-bodied, sweet, and creamy, with fruit-forward notes.

FEATURED MICROLOT: TERRACOTA - Felipe Luiz Ramos de Carvalho

Last month we featured Fazenda Recanto and the Magalhães Paiva family, who have been producing coffee at Recanto since 1896—for five generations. This month we move in the opposite direction with Felipe de Luiz Ramos de Carvalho, a first-generation coffee grower. In 2019, Felipe purchased land in São Tomas de Aquino, Minas Gerais, and planted non-traditional coffee varieties like Pau Brasil, Geisha, Aranãs, and Catigua. Last harvest was his first with these new cultivars, and incredibly, he finished fourth in the Alta Mogiana competition and eighteenth in the Cup of Excellence. Brazil produced around 50 million bags of coffee last year, so this lot was in the top 0.00001 percentile—not a bad first-year accomplishment.

Felipe Luiz Ramos de Carvalho planted non-traditional cultivars at Terracota, and the results have quickly paid off.

This lot of Catigua MG2 was manually harvested in July. After harvesting it was put into raffia bags for 1.5 days and then taken to shaded African beds for drying. The drying was stopped at 18% moisture content and the coffee was bagged and stored in the warehouse for 20 days. After this, it was taken to the concrete patios for drying to 11% moisture content.

Explore Brazil: May 2023