A couple of weeks ago, DRWakefield sent us a message:

We are traveling to Brazil and we've got a spot for you as our media partners.

Would you like to join us?

so I said: "Yes, that would be great!"

I've never been to Brazil and I don't really know anything about Brazilian coffee and so at the end of July 2017

I took my camera and got on the plane to Sao Paulo to cover the whole visit to Daterra Coffee Farm.

So it's 8 a.m in the morning and we arrived to Uberlandia airport

and we're taking a van to the coffee farm.

so here we are..

Let's start by telling you about our guides,

Will from the DRWakefield and Gabriel from Daterra Coffee Farm.

DRWakefield is the UK representative for Daterra,

and we work really closely with our roasters in the UK and parts of Europe

to connect them to Daterra here in Brazil

so that we find the right coffee for the right roasters.

Every year during the harvest season we host

a lot of people from all over the world here in the farm so this week for example

we are hosting people from the UK

so on this trip specifically we brought some clients from Europe

who internally brought some of their clients

We're going to spend three days here to learn all you need to know about coffee production

Daterra is a family owned business,

it started 33 years ago

when we started with some fruits, pine trees, cattle

and finally when we found coffee

we challenged ourselves to do coffee beans that

go beyond the norm and not always taste what people think of when they think of Brazilian coffee

Daterra were always pioneers of the coffee industry

especially here in Brazil so they were one of the first estates in this region to grow coffee.

They were voted last year the most sustainable farm in Brazil

not just in coffee but like in any agricultural product

so it is officially the most sustainable farm in this country.

Daterra has 6,200 hectars of land

It sounds pretty big and it's quite big, but more than half of it is actually environmental preservation lands

areas that we will not touch.

2,800 is actual coffee planted areas

but what we do to keep the quality in this big farm

we slice the whole farm into mini farms

so each mini farm has from 5 to 15 hectars

and we have all information about it and every decision that is done for one mini farm is done individually

Good morning from Daterra coffee farm!

We're taking a van and going to the fields? Yeah, that's right. Let's go!

Some of the farms have their cherries hand-picked

and these are pretty much just about to be harvested..

And some other farms use big machines to harvest their coffee

The machines that we have here in the farm. They're projected not to harm the coffee trees

They build them pretty almost entirely from scratch. Their mechanics work on them to deliver the best quality

Doing that helped pick only the cherries that are really ready.

Green cherries stay in the tree

and later we come back here to pick them

when they are ready so that's the idea, not shaking too much to pick those green cherries.

They need to stay here, so we come back and do a second or third picking with the harvesting machine

if we need to.

So we gotta go. That was harvesting of coffee with the big machine and we continue.

After seeing the harvesting we are now headed to the coffee nursery where the tiny trees are cultivated.

Here they grow little seedlings into big trees to plant them around the farm

There is 1.8. Million seedlings in this little area - all been planted by hand

I'm guessing that this is a bourbon amarelo which I imagine is a yellow bourbon.

so once it's planted in the field, it will take anywhere between two to three years to produce coffee

and after that point it will grown to be about this sort of height.

before then it goes up to being like three meters or two meters tall

We visited some experimental fields on the farm

where they cooperate with universities and scientists

in order to challenge the land and learn more about the production.

This is an experimental field where we are planting Lorina varietal

which is the naturally low caffeine varietal from La Reina Island

and also some geisha trees which is not common at all in Brazil.

We got the geisha seeds from the university in Brazil

they have a big genetics bank called EPAMIC and we are testing those two varietels

with shade ground techniques

Here we have the first cherries of these geisha trees from this experimental field

of course that's very little

amount of cherries because these trees are here only one and a half years

So Brazil has a little bit of an image problem

it's the world's largest producer of coffee

so even today it still produces like a third of all the coffee in the world

and a lot of people in the world have just known it to be the commercial origin.

But recently over the last 10–20 years a lot of effort and energy has going to

a number of farms and Daterra is leading the way,

but there are others in the country as well that are putting a lot more focus on quality rather then quantity

Of all Dattera coffees, the Daterra Classics make up 75% of the whole production.

These are coffees with the classic Brazilian charakteristics:

notes of nuts, chocolate and some sweetness

consistently scoring between 80 to 86 points.

The Daterra collection coffees make up 25% of the production. These are coffees that score 86 to 89,

are fully traceable and usually used as single origins.

The experimental 1% are called Masterpieces by Daterra.

We have these experimental units here in the farm that we call the masterpieces unit

where we have all the possibilities, different kinds of pulpers that use lots of water, no water, little water

all the kinds of drying techniques from raised beds with shade

with raised beds – full sun, patio, drum dryers with gas adjustment for temperature

so the idea is having all these techniques and these possibilities to

combine them and try to create new flavors.

And we have been very successful in some of our micro lots

creating these very different flavors that most of the times people cup and say,

Ok, this is not what I expect from Brazil.

We are at the Daterra's experimental processing facility

So this is where all the microlots and their crazy experiments that they produce every year get processed.

We were thrilled to cup the potential masterpieces.

Those coffees were some of the best ones we have ever tasted

completely different from the usual Brazilian coffees.

Any general comments?

We didn't rehearse that.

So we just finished the cupping from the project Masterpieces and

and it was mindblowing! Really, the best cupping I've ever had

People in the field, people in the farm, everyone's so passionate about this

and then when we were able to present a table like that

And I feel like we are giving baby steps in changing how the words perceives Brazil

and for as coffee geeks and Daterra employees it's just mindblowing. I'm so happy!

Everyone gets to participate in this process

because when we want everyone's roots to be forever in the farm for the future generations

To say our last goodbye, we planted a tree that will grow on the farm with our name at its foot.

So we planted a tree. Now we are moving again, and there'll be the second surprise which we have no idea..

Let's go!

Before leaving the farm we gathered around a dinner table to share the last cup of coffee together

The whole trip was mind blowing!

We learned so much about the coffee culture in Brazil,

the farming processes at Daterra and its investment in innovations.

We have to say, thank you for coming and spending time with us

so pretty much we watch the sunset at this magic place,

enjoying some coffee and we toast for this moment

And as Will said, there are yet many prejudices to what the quality of Brazilian coffees can be.

To everyone who has doubts about Brazilian coffee, I'd like to say this:

"You haven't tried the coffees from this farm yet!"

Thank you, Daterra for this incredible experience!