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The Story:
Following the black frosts of the 1970's,
which wiped out many Brazilian coffee farms, many farmers
moved to the frost-free Cerrado coffee producing region
near the nation's new capital of Brasilia.
The Cerrado, consisting of grassy savannah,
scrub lands, and gallery forest, is found on the high, flat,
central plateau of Brazil. It covers over 2 million square
kilometers -- three times the size of Texas, and portions
extend into Bolivia and Paraguay. It the largest woodland-savannah
in South America, and the richest savannah in terms of biodiversity
in the entire world, with 45% of the 10,000 plants species
found in the region found nowhere else on earth.
A great breakthrough for fine Brazil coffee
came with the development of the semi-dry or "pulped
natural" method, in which the skin is removed from
the coffee fruit immediately after picking, as it is in
the wet or washed method, but the mucus or fruit flesh is
allowed to remain on the beans as they dry. In this compromise
method the coffee remains on the drying patio for less time
than in the full-on natural or dry method because drying
is more efficient owing to the removal of the tough skin
of the fruit.
Brazilian farmers have refined this method to the point
that it produces more and more of the finest coffee in Brazil,
often with delicately fruity and sometimes floral sensory
profiles, more complex than typically produced in Brazil
by the washed method, but more consistent and silkily transparent
than produced by the dry or natural method.
Combined with lower acidity owing to lower growing altitudes
than prevail in most other fine coffee growing areas of
the world and typically dry, sunny weather during fruiting
promoting sweetness, the result is a Brazil coffee with
sweetness, gentle acidity, and delicately complex fruit
notes hovering between flowers and chocolate.
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