Get to know the April BOM – Brazil Edio Miranda

 

The story of a coffee can be told in many ways: the history of a country, the economy of a region, the culture of a people, the genealogy of the trees. In the case of Fazenda Edio Miranda, it is about family and legacy.

 

Senhor Edio Miranda and his wife Senhora Maria Aparecida Milagres Miranda (known as Dona Cida) bought the small farm Sitio Santo Antonio do Prado in 1967. The farm was old and neglected – full of weeds – but it was situated within the National Park Serra do Brigadeiro and its natural beauty won over the obvious disrepair.

 

Parque Serra do Brigadeiro is home to a wide range of plants and animals, including orchids, bromeliads and towering cedar, ocelots, jaguars and the araponga bird which gives the locality its name. It is a little slice of paradise which carves through Minas Gerais, through nine municipalities along a mountain range with four major peaks – Soares (1,950 masl), Campestre (1,908 masl), Grama (1,899 masl) and Bone (1,870 masl). It is cool, lush and verdant, fed by the water melting from the mountain caps.

 

 

The Fazenda (farm) is surrounded by these mist-wreathed mountain peaks, and the hills are crisscrossed by creeks, culminating in waterfalls. Senhor Edio and Dona Cida’s dream was to raise their young family in the stunning surrounds of the park and raised coffee trees to be sold as a commodity, a low-level cash crop. The family would harvest the coffee cherries and then send it away for the beans to be processed in bulk with other coffees.

 

 

It was the purchase of some coffee processing equipment in the late 1980s which opened their eyes to the potential of coffee and by the 1990s, the Miranda family had seriously engaged in the coffee business, dedicating themselves to specialty coffee production. Education, investment and a lot of hard work – neither Edio nor Cida took any holidays – paid off and the Fazenda soon began to receive coffee awards, both within the local area and internationally.

 

 

Today the fazenda is 40 hectares of coffee trees of selected varieties, harvested by hand by 15 staff and processed by the Miranda family – Edio and Cida are joined by their children Adreia and Renato. At the age of 76, Senhor Edio still cups the coffee personally to discern the flavour profile and dictate the processing techniques. His unwavering dedication to coffee quality has led him to constantly improve the processing on site. When he saw raised beds on a tv program, he set out to build his own so that the coffee could develop more evenly as the air is able to circulate as they dry in the sun.

 

 

The lot we have selected for the April 2019 Bean of the Month is honey processed. This means that the skin of the cherry is removed from the beans and the sweet flesh of the cherry is allowed to dry onto the coffee, creating a sticky honey-like effect. The beans are then washed before being thoroughly dried and sent for export. This process elevates the sweetness of the coffee, highlighting the chocolate and caramel flavours while creating a creamy body and mild, balanced acidity.

 

We say “obrigados!” (thankyou) to the Miranda family for this beautiful coffee and congratulate Senhor Edio for his success. As his children have taken on more of the work on the Fazenda they have decided to change the name, and so Sitio Santo Antonio do Prado has become Fazenda Edio Miranda. Their father’s legacy of carefully crafting specialty coffee now bears his name as it travels out into the world.

 

The family continue to cherish the beauty of the land which first drew them to the site and maintain green corridors throughout the property to preserve the flora and fauna of the local ecosystem. Sustainability is a core value of the farm as it continues through the generations and the Miranda family invest in initiatives like water recycling to protect the waterways which feed the area.

 

We hope you apreciar (enjoy) this offering and suggest you try your cafezinho (small coffee) com leite (with milk) or lightly roasted for cafe coado (filter coffee).