Brazil Fazenda Santa Lucia Yellow Bourbon

Arrived mid November 2025 in grainpro liners.

This lovely Natural from the Santa Clara farm in Minas Gerais has just arrived.  It has been a difficult year, to say the least, for sourcing coffee from Brazil.  Once 50% tariffs on Brazil were put in place, almost no coffee was being imported to the US.  So we are fortunate to have sourced Fazenda Santa Lucia from one of the main producing areas in the country. 

Producer Helcio Carneiro Pinto has been working in coffee since he was 15 years old, helping his mother produce and process crops. In 1976, Hélcio married Glycia Pereira Carneiro and began to manage Santa Lucia. In the 1990s, Helcio was one of the founders of Aprocam, a group of pioneers that began a movement for the pursuit of quality coffee in the region of Carmo de Minas. Aprocam introduced the idea of processing pulped naturals on Carmo de Minas and Hélcio was the first producer to get the machines for this process.

Since that development at Santa Lucia, Helcio has worked with universities and scientists, and he has taken trips to other coffee-producing countries to further his knowledge of the production of specialty coffee. Today, Helcio and Fazenda Santa Lucia maintain a worldwide reputation for quality Brazilian coffees.Fazenda Santa Lucia is large, 740 hectares but only 83 hectares of the farm are for growing coffee.

There is a social premium included in the purchase of these coffees that directly funds a charity called CriaCarmo, a youth initiative established by CarmoCoffees, our export partner in Carmo de Minas, that aims to provide social, educational, and athletic opportunities to at-risk youth in the region. Cafe Imports has supported this project since 2013 with owner-equity donations, and also partners with CarmoCoffees on one lot of coffee annually that is priced to benefit CriaCarmo. The youth who participate primarily come from the local coffee-producing families and enjoy karate, futbol, and chess lessons among other things.

Yellow Bourbon is a naturally occurring Typica mutation; selected from Ethiopian coffee cultivated in Yemen transplanted to Bourbon Island (now Réunion) in the 18th century.

Minas Gerais is the largest state for coffee production, accounting for half of the country's coffee. It contains many subregions with varying elevations and climates, all part of the Brazilian highlands. Brazil's largest rivers and mountains are in this state, with the southern portion producing the most coffee due to the forested hills and cool weather. Coffee is also produced in the highland savannah in the west, the Mantiqueira Mountains in the south, and the Atlantic forest in the east.