On the farm side: Rio Brilhante
Meet Inácio Carlos Urban, owner of Fazenda Rio Brilhante in the Cerrado Mineiro region of Brazil.
Inácio has been growing coffee in this region for over 30 years, and its love for the culture is evident in a coffee that has won numerous awards.
Inácio and his family operate Fazenda Rio Brilhante according to three guiding principles.
Transparency
The farm holds Rainforest Alliance and UTZ certifications. It is also dedicated to contributing to the development of the Cerrado Mineiro region.
Trust
A family business for over 30 years, Rio Brilhante is renowned for the consistency with which it produces high quality coffees.
Innovation
Rio Brilhante seeks to innovate in every aspect of its industry. For example, each batch can be traced from farm to roaster through the use of QR codes.
Cerrado Mineiro is a unique region due to its flat plateaus, which allow the coffee to be harvested by equipment that lightly shakes the plants to release the coffee cherries.
This process is faster and many experts claim it's kinder to the plants than traditional hand picking. Here you can see the coffee after the machine has passed. It is then placed on large canvases before being picked up.
Beautiful cherries waiting to be picked to be sorted, processed and dried.
The cherries are transported by truck to speed up the process. This eliminates any unwanted fermentation.
An employee uses a traditional technique to remove unwanted debris such as leaves or stems.
Almost all of the coffee here is processed using the natural method.
The coffee is then dried in the sun on the traditional cement patios.
Once dried, coffee samples were sent to Kittel and tested with our importing partner Marcos Macedo.
All the coffees we have tasted that come from Rio Brilhante have been outstanding, so much so that we have purchased not one but two separate microlots to show you the quality of the farm's products.
We hope you enjoy them!
Photos for this article are used with permission from Rio Brilhante