Not too long ago, Brazil coffees seldom made it onto American specialty menus. If they did they
were identified rather generically as “Santos,” a term describing the higher grades of Brazil
coffees, usually from the growing regions of Mogiana and Sul de Minas. The Santos cup, long a
mainstay in better-quality blends in Europe and the eastern part of the United States, is typically
low-acid, medium- to full-bodied, sweet, often with dry fruit or pleasantly musty/malty tones.
In the past few years, however, Brazil growers, spearheaded by the Brazil Specialty
Coffee Association, have managed to both change the perception of their coffees in specialty
circles, as well as change the coffees themselves.
Changing the Coffees
Brazil coffees, once almost exclusively strip-picked and dried in the fruit in thick, mold-inducing
layers unprotected from rain, have become the recipient of considerable technical innovation and
attention. Sophisticated sorting methods isolate the ripe fruit from the green and overripe fruit,
compensating for machine- or strip-picking. Sun-drying is alternated with low-temperature
machine-drying to reduce risk of exposure to mold-causing rain during the drying period. And a
new (or revived) processing method, the pulped natural or semi-dry method, has produced
impressive results both in terms of farm efficiency and cup quality and character.
Changing Perception
As for repositioning Brazil as a specialty origin, the Brazil Specialty Coffee Association and its
allies have pulled off an extraordinary publicity and marketing coup over the past three years.
They have pioneered a structure that simultaneously selects and publicizes the finest specialty
coffees of a given origin, while establishing an Internet-based system for selling those coffees
directly to roasters and dealers worldwide.
The Cup of Excellence, originally the brainchild of the distinguished cupper and coffee
pundit George Howell, leading Brazilian cupper Silvio Leite, and Brazilian grower and coffee
leader Marcelo Vieira, now operates annual green coffee competitions in three countries– Brazil,
Guatemala, and Nicaragua — but Brazil is the place where the idea and logistics of the program
were first conceived, tested, and put into play.
The Cup of Excellence competitions import distinguished coffee cuppers from all over the
world to assess the merits of an origin’s finest green coffees. The best of these coffees as
determined by the judges’ ratings are then offered at auction to roasters and green dealers over the
Internet on the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s website. Winning lots of coffees
always command substantial premiums over going prices for similar coffees.
But the most important contributions of the Cup of Excellence are to call attention to
coffee as a legitimate arena for connoisseurship, to set new price benchmarks for the finest
coffees of a given origin, and to dramatize to growers the potential upside of producing quality.
New Processing Method, New Cup
I participated in last year’s semifinal cupping sessions designed to pick the 40 finalists for this
year’s Brazil Cup of Excellence competition. What was striking to me about these coffees was
the apparent emergence of a different style of Brazil cup, a cup distinguished by a delicately
bright acidity and a high-toned, floral and fruit character, rather than the low-toned, soft, round,
often spicy or malty character of traditional Brazil “Santos”-style coffees.
It appears that this new Brazil cup derives in part from a new Brazilian processing
method. Recall that “processing” is a clumsy word for a set of crucial, often colorful procedures:
removal of the fruit residue from the coffee beans and the drying of those beans.
For the past hundred years or so the two basic methods for achieving this end were the
wet or “washed” method and the dry or “natural” method. The wet method involves removing
most of the fruit residue from the beans immediately after picking and before drying. There are
several variations of the wet method, all involving water, hence the name. Wet-processing tends
to intensify the bright, dry-yet-sweet sensation we call acidity, and tends to produce a high-
toned cup with transparent, clearly articulated complexity. Most of the world’s fine coffees are
wet-processed.
Until recently almost none of Brazil’s coffees were wet-processed. Instead, they were
processed by the ancient dry or “natural” method, in which the fruit is simply picked and put
out in the sun to dry, fruit and all. The dried, shriveled fruit residue is later removed from the
beans by machine.
The dry method can produce splendidly fruity, complex, full-bodied coffee, but the
problem is the long period of drying, during which the beans are held hostage, as it were, to the
health and soundness of the drying fruit. If the fruit sugars ferment, for example, the coffee will
acquire a fermented fruit flavor, which can be quite pleasant if the ferment is mild and sweet-
toned, or horrific if it is intense, rotten and composty. Or the sugars can attract micro-organisms,
which give the coffee a musty, mildewed flavor. Again, this flavor can be pleasant if it is mild and
the coffee is sweet — copy writers on coffee bags are wont to call an attractively musty flavor
“spicy,” “earthy,” or even “chocolaty.” My preferred term, if I am feeling positive about the
sensation, is malty. But if this flavor complex is too intense and the coffee is not sweet, the result
is a cup that tastes as though it were filtered through a pile of moldy rags sitting in a damp corner
of a garage for six months.
Neither Wet Nor Dry
Some years ago Brazilian growers and agricultural authorities began to experiment with a third
processing method, one that has been used elsewhere, but not systematically & the semi-dry or
“pulped natural” method. The coffee fruit is skinned as it is in the wet method, but the fruit
mucilage or pulp, the sticky stuff that clings to the beans after the skin is removed, is allowed to
dry on the beans rather than first being removed or “washed” off.
The pulped natural method has technical and economic advantages for farmers: It requires
less drying patio space than the dry method (the beans dry faster with the skin removed),
subjects the drying bean to less danger from fermentation and invasion by moulds, while requiring
less investment in equipment than the wet method.
The pulped natural method also, it turns out, has an interesting impact on cup character.
This week’s review seems to confirm what Brazilian cuppers have observed (using different
words perhaps) for several years now, and what I have observed in recent cuppings. The best
Brazilian pulped natural cup seems to be high-toned but delicate, gently acidy, with fairly
consistent appearance of sweet fruit (berry, pears), floral, and citrus notes. The fruit and floral
notes are not nearly as intense as they are in Ethiopian coffees, and may resemble similar notes in
wet-processed coffees elsewhere, parts of Central America, for example, but the combination of
delicate, light-footed acidity and the tickle of floral and fruit notes point to a new Brazil cup and
a subtle new pleasure for coffee aficionados.
