Eagle Monte Carmelo is our take on a classic profile from a classic region: the Cerrado Mineiro. Our goal with this coffee is to have a consistent profile from lot to lot, and year to year, making this a coffee that you can rely on year-round.
This lot was sourced as part of our Café Delas Program. Café Delas was created to help women farmers access the resources, knowledge and voice they need to grow their operations to the fullest potential. Every Café Delas coffee is sourced 100% from women farmers and for every sale, a portion of the profit is reinvested in programs that promote gender equality and empower women in the field.
The Region
Coffee was first cultivated in Cerrado Mineiro in the 1970s by farmers from Paraná and São Paulo. Through a technique that corrects soil acidity (liming) and irrigation, large-scale cultivation has become possible. has around 4,500 farmers cultivating a combined area of 210,000ha. The Cerrado Mineiro presents a dry climate during the harvest period, which causes the coffee to suffer less from humidity after harvesting, allowing for a consistent drying process. The region, which covers 55 municipalities in total, achieved the Denomination of Origin in 2013 and was the first region in the country to receive this recognition.
History of Coffee in Brazil
American colonists had been drinking coffee for fifty years before the first coffee seed was planted in Brazil in 1727. A hundred years later, Brazil accounted for 30% of the world's coffee supply. A hundred years after that, in the 1920's, Brazil held a virtual monopoly, producing 80% of the world's coffee. Although Brazil's market share peaked at 80% in the 1920's, its continuing status as the world's largest coffee producer still gives the country considerable influence on the market and coffee prices. It is said that when Brazil sneezes, the coffee world catches cold. In 1975, a black fros destroyed over 70 percent of the crop in Brazil and coffee prices doubled world-wide. Brazil was a founding member of the Pan-American Coffee Bureau, which invented the concept of a "coffee break" during an advertising campaign in the early 1950's.
