Super sweet, soft, fruity, chocolatey coffee.
3rd generation organic farm that consistently produces fantastic coffee.
Long-term relationship coffee.
Please note orders containing Organic coffee’s will only be roasted and dispatched on Wednesdays.
Farm: Fazenda Jacaranda
Owners: Cassio Franco Moreira, agronomist, PhD, and his mother Telma Teixeira Franco
Region; Minas Gerais
Process: Natural
Size: 150 Hectares
Altitude: 1.100 – 1.250mts
Varieties: Bourbon, Catuai, Mundo Novo, Icatu, Catucai
Scale: Annual production of around 400 bags of 60kg
Roast: One Roast. This is a filter coffee that is extractable as espresso with the right equipment.
It’s more than twenty years since we first bought Fazenda Jacaranda, through Bourbon Mill and Mercanta. We were told we couldn’t buy it around 2008/9 as Cassio’s coffee was going to Fortnum’s (through a 3rd party) and it was a showroom coffee for a well-known Independent London roaster. All of these companies changed hands, and it was in 2016 when I bumped into Cassio in Pinhal (Brazil) that we built this collaboration.
These days, Cassio is more than a farmer who sends us coffee. Cassio has spent time with us here in the UK (as a friend) and has also taken me to some of the best organic coffee farms in Brazil, including his own.
Jacaranda is more than just another coffee to us. It is a relationship that spans over 2 decades.
The Franco family has produced coffee in these lands since 1860, originally at the Serra Negra Farm. Carlos Fernandes Franco inherited part of Serra Negra farm in 1969 and started the Jacarandá coffee farm. He died in 2003 and was always passionate about nature and a true ecologist (also engineer who made huge bridges in the Amazon). He was the pioneer in organic coffee production in Brazil and the farm is organic since 1992. His grandson Cassio Franco Moreira has started agronomy college in 1995 already having a strong organic coffee influence.
Today the farm is divided within Carlos Franco´s widow, Francisca Franco, and her sons/daughters. All of the areas are still organically managed but some coffee plots have been abandoned due to family and farm restructuring. Today 2 daughters, 1 son, and grandson of Carlos run several parts of Jacarandá with around 30ha of organic coffee being managed and a plan to renew more 15ha in the next 5 years. When we visited Jacaranda, the level of re-planting and reinvestment was staggering. Cassio is an optimist and a long term thinker. I really hope that we will be able to share with you a micro-lot from Jacaranda next season, as we have done with the award-winning Sitio Grota Sao Pedro this season. Quietly, I also hope that Jacaranda does so well it wins Cup of Excellence one day, as a reward and recognition for the long-term dedication.
ORGANIC Brazilian Fazenda Jacaranda One Roast
In a Cupping bowl:
Aromatics: Milk chocolate with a promise of fruit
Body: Creamy on cooling
Acidity: Balanced, jammy and low
For what it’s worth, I think Jacaranda really benefits from resting for a week from roast. Sometimes that dry note you can get in coffee is down to how fresh the coffee is from the roast as well as from the harvest.
On opening, the first flavour emerging is chocolate; this is just the temperature. As soon as the coffee gets somewhere close to drinking (AKA Sipping and slurping) territory, soft fruits start to appear. Soft and sweet fruit sugars like blueberry jam, this coffee is oh-so-sweet! Gradually, the coffee cools, and the combination of body and flavour is like cocoa butter. If this were a film, this would be a little bit like watching the credits all the way to the end, way after the end of the drama. Defining the flavours of cooling and cold coffee might seem pointless until it’s delicious! The cooling coffee brings a little cocoa and a touch of tannins, broadly like red grapes and plum. Another great harvest from Cassio.
In most filter brewing methods, with good water and fresh burrs 60g of coffee per litre is fantastic.
In a 9oz milk-based: Jacaranda holds its own. Dark chocolate, a touch of grain and sugarcane sweetness.
In a 6oz milk-based: There is good cocoa and some wild ripe fruit.
Espresso: For a “One Roast”, you might expect all things sour, but the low acidity makes this balance beautifully. Think Rowntree fruit gums and lime sugars.
Brew recipe:
18g coffee into 34-36g of espresso 28-33 for milk-based drinks and 18g into 45-50g of espresso liquid in 30-40 seconds.
94.5-95.5C
