Even in Specialty, coffee prices are very based on the commodity price for coffee. When the market is up, the price that you as a consumer pay goes up. The trick that roasters play? When the market price goes back down, they leave the prices you pay at the higher level. It's how roasters pad their profits whilst blaming prices on inflation. We're trying to do things differently, so when we buy a beautiful Brazilian coffee from a certified carbon-neutral farm at a really low market price? We pass those savings on to you, the consumer. Here's a specialty coffee at the same price as your supermarket blend, and not only did the farmer get paid fairly, all the proceeds go to charity (as always with Skylark). It tastes delicious as well, with notes of Apple and Clementine with a creamy and nougat-y body. By our count, that's a win-win-win-win!
We sourced this coffee from a farm our roaster visited four years ago with help from our friends at Ally Coffee.
Coffee producer Petrônio Otávio Borges de Sousa operates Fazenda Santa Rosa in Cambuquira, Minas Gerais in the Sul de Minas region of Brazil. Petrônio was born to a coffee producing family, with history stretching back to his grandfather who set the standard of the family’s devotion to agriculture. Today, Fazenda Santa Rosa—which totals 636 hectares of land and includes 290 hectares of coffee production—is just one of the family’s farms in the Sul de Minas region. After a survey this year, it was also declared to be carbon neutral in all its operations! Quite an accreditation for a country in which mechanized picking is de rigueur.
Petrônio’s main motivation is to produce specialty coffees, aiming to produce high quality lots with a commitment to the hard work and innovation needed to accomplish his goal. That motivation is supported by the social ties that connect Petrônio and his family to the broader coffee industry. As he explains, “[relationships] created within the coffee market, whether with friends in Brazil and customers and partners abroad, also motivate us more and more to increase our commitment and performance in the sector.”
This lot of Yellow Bourbon coffee underwent Natural processing. Yellow Bourbon was discovered in 1930 on a Red Bourbon farm in Pederneiras, São Paulo, Brazil. It’s unclear if Yellow Bourbon developed as a natural mutation of Red Bourbon, or if it was a naturally occurring cross between Red Bourbon and Yellow Botucatu, a mutation of Typica discovered in 1871 in Botucatu, São Paulo. Yellow Bourbon is known for good cup quality and relatively high productivity, and has come back into fashion as a cultivated variety across Brazil after its initial novelty wore off in the mid 1900’s. Instituto Agronomico (IAC) of Sao Paulo State in Campinas, Brazil renewed research efforts of the variety in 2005, seeking to highlight the plant’s robust nature and high cup potential.
Elevation: 1000 Meters above Sea Level
Varietal: Yellow Catuai
Cup score: 83
Price paid per kg: £4.50
Process: Fully natural, cherries are sorted, then dried on patios
