"Irmãs Pereira is a high quality focused coffee farm lying in the heart of one of Brazil's most recognisedand awarded growing areas, the Mantiqueira hills. Now in the second generation of ownership since it's planting in the 1970s the has been a beacon for quality and sustainability for many years. Before being renamed Irmãs Pereira (The Pereira Sisters) to represent the sisters' joint management, the farm won several awards in the Cup of Excellence programme under it's original name Fazenda do Serrado. The commitment to quality that led to these awards continues and the quality produced on the farm represents the very best that Brazil produces.

The farm is on the outskirts of the town of Carmo de Minas, and as with many farms around the town of Carmo, the rolling Mantiqueira hills are too steep for mechanised picking, so common through much of Brazil. This means the coffee has to be hand picked, allowing for closer control over quality from the outset of processing. Thereafter, a number of different processes are used by the Pereira sisters, and this year we've selected two for Artisan Roast.

For natural processed lots Irmãs Pereira's coffee is harvested only when the cherries reach an advanced stage of ripeness. All the cherries are handpicked and then res-sorted to remove unripes and over-ripes leaving a homogeneous selection of pure ripe cherry. In this case of this Yellow Bourbon lot, perfectly ripe fruit is a slightly orange-pink yellow colour. The coffee is immediately dried in the sun on the farm’s patios producing a rich, dense and fruity cup.

In the cup the natural from Irmãs Pereirais supremely balanced. The main flavours of candied roasted peanuts and milk chocolate roll over the palette and the more subtle flavours of rasins, amareno cherries and black grape come through on a smooth deliious aftertaste. This is a full bodied low acid coffee, but the subtle acids that are present are grape like and give a hint to the excellent processing of this lot.

In terms of brewing this coffee offers a range of options. As an espresso the milk chocolate and caramel aspect of the flavour profile are more present, and lend themselves well to milk based espresso drinks. For the subtleties of the red fruit and cherry like flavours we recommend brewing as a filter, and this is where the grape like acids will come through too."