pedra grande: brazil

Luciano’s father, Antonio Vicente, came to the town of Caconde, when he was 15 years old. he bought a piece of land up the mountain from town, built a home & planted his coffee. he called it Vila Vicente, where Luciano and his seven siblings were born & raised, surrounded by coffee trees. in those days, his father’s coffee trees were treated as a commodity, they mixed the varietals together & sold it to the local co-op. 20 years ago, Antonio passed away & Luciano inherited 3 hectares of land & tried to continue what his father had taught him.

in 2014, João Hamilton, a neighbor of Luciano (and a producer we’ve bought coffee from in the past), told Luciano that his coffee trees had a big potential for producing specialty coffee. “João told me about FAF’s project, about taking care of the land & revitalizing the soil. decreasing insecticides and picking & drying at more ripe levels. João told me that my land had good altitude & that I had to produce high quality coffee.”

Luciano listened & began arriving at 6am every day at his fields with new enthusiasm. he started cupping his coffees & learning to drink them properly. gradually, he developed a deep passion for his coffee fields. Luciano is part of FAFCoffees agronomist project with a focus on increasing quality & sustainable farm management. its been 7 years now without the use of glifosat in his soils & two years utilizing green fertilization with cover crops. the quality in the cup has followed in suit.

today, the coffee drank in the Vicente household is always the highest scoring lot from the crop. Luciano prides himself in saying that he himself planted, picked, roasted & brewed it when he serves visitors. one of his favorite things to do is to brew a thermos & take it up to the big rock at the top of his land (pedra grande). there he can gaze upon his land and let the sweetness of his hard work linger on his pallet. “when I’m up there I think about my father, about my childhood and I can realize that my life, as that of my wife and children is improving. i feel energized that i’m doing something good for my family and for our eco-system. then I come down from the rock full of energy. i know there’s always a lot of work ahead but, coffee is my life and its what I like to do. I try to live this in the most intense way possible.”

this excellent Brazilian coffee is hand picked selectively and slow dried on raised beds.