From Coffee and Tea to F.I.T

Well is has been almost a month since I last wrote. I started to teach 3 classes at FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology, from the State University of New York. I love to teach and love the classes. The kids are fun to be around and it forced me to get back in touch with fashion, which I left behind when I started with coffee. The good news is that all processes are the same. To source, roast, sell coffee is pretty much the same as sourcing, manufacturing and importing garments. My area of teaching is technology, which is my passion, I guess besides fashion and coffee. I feel very fortunate that I am able to work in the three areas that I love the most. The coffee business is growing, more on the wholesale side than on the web. The WEB is hard specially when we do not have a lot of money to support Google ADs. I have been learning a lot about Google, SEO and all the little tricks of the Internet. Well yesterday on my way to a meeting , I saw Dianne Keaton on the bus...love the bus and the fact that celebrities take the bus as well!!!

Back from Virginia

Well Well things change so quickly in life, sometimes I really believe we should not plan at all. I was planning to move all of our inventory to Green Springs. Sergio  allowed us to use the little house as a distribution center.  I was planning to spend 2 weeks in Virginia making sure everything was fine...instead I started to teach 3 classes at FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology from the State University of New York. I had to come back to teach but Fernanda and  Lia stayed behind to finish the project.  We had a barbecue for our partners, Al, Debbi, Scotty and George. The whole Joy Brazil team was there, including myself, Patti, Lia and Jim...I had the best hamburger I ever had, with meat from Green Springs.  The distribution center is now ready, and I will post picture soon....bow just keep enjoying our coffee..is getting better and better!

Back to the Sao Joao vist.....

Well the people from Java loved the coffee, specially the Bourbon. The yellow  Bourbon is a special species of coffee, a very delicate coffee bean.  The color varies from yellow to pale straw, often with a red center. They are very smooth to drink.  They also tasted the Icatu and the Catuai, a much more common species in Brazil. The following day we went to visit some neighbor's farm. The farm from Paulo Tassinari, and the farm from Olavo Monteiro de Carvalho. Paulo Tassinari is known for his gourmet coffee, a beautiful farm  at a very high altitude. We had to take a truck  up the hill,  to see the plantation from up the mountain. Olavo's farm is more of a horse ranch, even though he has some coffee, it is not his primary business. What we found interesting at his place was the cooperative he has for the farm workers; the wives work with arts and crafts that they later sell in Rio de Janeiro. They also have school for the kids, a great social benefits for the workers. Then we visited a local roaster. It was great for me to start learning the different coffees, the different plantation methods etc.  Sergio's  harvest is hand picked. He test the cherries still on the the branch for humidity. When it is right he does the first harvest, only cherries that are ripe enough are picked.  Every 2 hours, a truck takes the cherries back to be washed, and the process starts. Each tree is picked two to three times during the season. This is the first step in harvesting a good gourmet coffee. Only the perfect cherries are harvest therefore the hope is that at the end of the process, we will only have perfect coffee beans. The season in the highlands of Rio starts in April, way ahead of the rest of the country. Because of his proximity to the ocean ( 145 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro) the season starts before the rest of the country.

Back to where we are!!

I am so proud of where we are today. We just sent out a blast to 5000 people, and the attached ad will be on the program of the Manhattan Short Film Festival.  We will be moving our distribution center to Gordonsville, VA by the end of August.  We just received the first shipment of the "Floresta da Amazonia" products.  As I said to a friend today, even though we still did not make any money, the business is growing and I am very proud of us.   We will use the cottage at Sergio's farm to store everything we are selling.  Right now, I can't barely walk into my one bed room apartment.  My friend Vania said that my home looks like a Turkish Bazar!! It  is exactly what I feel when I walk into my home.  We just got some more of the Carmo de Minas ( everyone loves it) and also some more of the Breakfast Blend and the House Blend. We are doing well, just hope for more sales to come in. 

From Coffee to Fire to another visit with the roaster

Sorry I haven't blogged the whole last week.  Sunday morning after my cup of coffee, we went out to a pic-nic in Central Park. As we walked out of my building, there were 15 fire engines and a crowd of people outside the building. The building right across from me got fire, real fire, like TV news fire. My friend's car was parked across the street, 14.5 feet from the fire hydrant. She got a ticket. We did not know what to do, there were people in stretchers, a lot of curious trying to find out what happened me and the dog!!!!We ended up going to out pic-nic before knowing the car was all right, but seeing all those people without a home, who cares about the car right??? Even the coffee was out of my mind for a while.

Then on Tuesday we travelled to Virginia to visit with the roaster.  We had a great visit with him, and found out he can make flavored coffee for us at Joy Brazil. So soon we will be offering flavored coffee as well. 

Americans love flavored coffee, the issue being is that in order to add flavor to the coffee, one doesn't need such a good coffee bean. The coffee itself will disappear in the flavor, so we need a not so good coffee to flavor.  We have been trying to get some not so good coffee from Brazil and it has been very hard. 

What we found out is that people are holding their coffee inventory in the hopes that coffee  prices go up....so now we have gasoline prices going up as well as coffee....Economics working its way !!!!

The Trip with the Java's To Sao Joao Coffee Farm

The Sao Joao Coffee farm has been producing coffee since 1853 on the highlands of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The farm was founded by Tristao Cunha Camara and follows the expansion of the coffee field into the State of Rio de Janeiro.  The farm has been restored and is one of the representatives of the coffee region in Imperial Brazil. ( The period lasted from 1808 when the seat of the Portuguese crown moved to Rio de Janeiro because of the Napoleonic Wars, untill the beguinning of the republic period in 1889).

We planned to meet the Java's in Rio and then drive to Petropolis, where the farm is. As I was leaving for the airport I got a call from Miami, telling me that the Chief Java did not have a visa for Brazil. 

Because the USA requires a visa from Brazilians, Americans visiting

Brazil are required a visa as well. We called the consulate in Miami and were fortunate enought to be able to get a visa right away. He was a day later than his fellows Java's.

We had prepared a whole typical Brazilian stay at the farm. We even bought a sample roaster so that we could roast and cup coffee.

 The First day was spent in driving   and horse back riding around the farm.   We had collected a lot of different coffees so that we could spend the time doing blends and cupping . The farm produces Catuai, Icatu and yellow Bourbon, which is considered the top of the coffees. Very delicate and hard to grow. 

Notes on a Coffee Estate Visit and Coffee Tastings

This is the little Eliane cow!!! She was my welcome soul mate at my first visit to Sao Joao Estate Coffee.

In order to register a "breed" cow, all of them that are born in the same year, must have the same initial on the name.  My mother's side of the family is from the north of Brazil, a regions famous for its "coroneis" farm owners, but not very well known by its creativity; all of my aunts and uncles had the same initials in their names: Emiliano, Edith, Edine, Eider, Eddie, Edna, and of course me Eliane.  In an effort to honor the other side of the family, Sergio name this cow Eliane. Such a pleasure. Our first encounter was during his 5oth birthday.  During this time I had the opportunity to see and learn a lot about coffee.  

Coffee is harvest once a year.  Gourmet and Special Coffee are most likely hand picked. Because not all the cherries mature at the same time, the workers pick from the same tree 3 or 4 times during the same season.  They even check for humidity to make sure the cherry ripe enough.   Every 2 hours, a truck comes and take the cherries to be washed The bad ones float, so that it does not go thru the process.  The coffee beans are then separated from the skin along with a muselage, that gives the beans its sweetness. After that, they are either laid on a bed or a floor in order to dry so that the beans can separate form the muselage.  I am not telling all the story now, but how is it that we spent $100.00 for a bottle of wine during dinner, but dont mind where our coffee is coming from?????

Coffee is what we take home after dinner, lunch, breakfast. This is the taste in our mouth when we leave the restaurant so why are we not more carefull about the origin of our favorite drink????

Planning the trip to Brazil

Well, as I said before the show went very well. There was a coffee retailer from Florida that had never been to a coffee farm, and asked if we could take him on  a tour of Brazilian Coffee Etates. We were happy to do it so we started to plan the trip for late June.  They would fly from Miami to Rio De Janeiro, we would pick them up and drive to Petropolis where Sao Joao Estate is.  We would then visit some farms in the region and then go to Sao Paulo; visit some farms in Sao Paulo and then go to Minas Gerais,( Pocos de Caldas )for some more visits.  I was continuing my education about coffee with books and DVD all over my home.  Started to visit local stores and taste different coffees. Visiting so many stores  I found out that there was no Brazilian Gourmet Coffee in New York City.  One could find a Cerrado, may be, but that was all.  I could not believe after all I learned about Brazilian Gourmet Coffee that the better stores in New York did not offer it to its customers. There was Colombian,   Guatemalan,  Ethiopian, Bolivian but no Brazilian.  I then learned that Brazil was known as a base of blends robusta coffee and when the old Brazilian Coffee Institute was extinguished no investment from the government were made in advertising our coffee. As opposed to us, Colombia spent more than 10 million dollars with the Juan Valdez campaign.  Even Illy coffee is mostly Brazilian Coffee, but everyone thinks it is Italian! Italy does not produce any coffee.  Robusta is a cheap coffee, that some people compare to Chicory. It is very strong and combined with a better coffee will produce what you know as Folgers, Maxwell House etc.

More on the SCAA Show

Our booth was very charming. People would stop by all the time. We had a big TV screen with images of Sao Joao Farm and a music from Caetano Veloso playing all day. Sergio loves to talk so everyone would stop and see the farm, with minimum details explanations.  The other Brazilians were all together with the people from BSCA, Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association; we thought that it would be best for us to be on our own, and it proved itself right. We were able to get one to one contact with a lot of roasters . The show was over and we had to pack everything back to New York. we joined the SCAA and this was the start of importing coffee into the United States.

The United States is not a coffee producer but it is the largest  consumer of coffee in the world.  Because of it, the import process is a lot easier than what I was used to in dealing with apparel.  Apparel,  have limits on the quantity to import,  have duties depending on the product so on and so forth. There are no duties for coffee.  One is required to register the facility with the FDA and the importer is basically responsible to make sure that what one says it is right Bottom line it was a great experience for me.

Long Beach, California 2007 SCAA Convention

The show was first week in May, and I called in March 2007!! She laughed at me and said everything was sold out.  If something came up she would call me. Last week in March I got a call saying they had a booth available did I want it. I said yes and here we go. I had less than a month to come up with a logo, a banner, buy and Espresso machine, make business cards, brochures, coffee cup etc. At that point, Sergio was just starting the harvest and we did not know if we had any coffee good enough to be consider special in any way.  Two weeks before the show, he called me and said the coffee got an 88 cupping, perfect! I got on the plane to California with a 30 lb excess weight luggage.  I wanted to carry everything with me. I was afraid the luggage would get lost.   The day of the set up came, we went to the convention center, unpack the Espresso machine and just looked at each other.....We had no idea how to set up the machine, much less how to make an espresso. The booth turned out beautiful and very elegant ( Sergio's touch!!!) but we could not make the coffee.  Thanks again to  the universe, the manufactures of Rancilio Coffee Machines were at the show and we had an "Espresso for Idiots" quick  lesson which worked for those few days.( I have taken a real Barista class after that) Pretty soon we were distributing coffee to people and they all loved our coffee. It was great to know that the small roaster were so happy to be talking to the farm itself, rather than going thru major distributors. We made  lots of contacts. One of the big roasters approached us and asked if they could visit the farm in July. We said of course and that Sergio was going to put together a whole trip to include several coffee regions in Brazil.  I was totally excited with the outcome and the trip. It would be a way for me to learn everything about growing coffee!!I Came back to New York sure that this is what I wanted to do. Get into a whole new area. There  was so much for me to learn. I bought several books and dvd so that at least I knew what questions to ask about coffee !!! This was my first step into the coffee world!!

From Victoria's Secret to Coffee Secrets

I have been a top executive for  the apparel industry for most of my life. I worked for brands such as Levi's, Express, Victoria's Secret Direct, Ann Taylor so on and so forth. I was traveling 80% of time, did not have a life, and became a problem solver. The fun of learning new things and meeting new people was gone. Most of my time was spent in meetings deciding the same thing over and over.  I was at the top when I realized there is more to life than being a corporate executive, titles and achievements did not mean a lot to me anymore. I was tired all the time, my mind could not stop. So I decided I did not want to do this anymore, this was not who I was. I was not my job, I was not my titles, but who was I???I think I spent a good year trying to figure this out . The problem with this is that at my age, I was used to a certain lifestyle and that had to change, drastically. On top of that I had to make a living and what could I do that would combine making some money with still having a life and doing the things that are now so important to me.

I was in Virginia with my cousin Sergio, who has a coffee farm in Petropolis, Rio de Janeiro.  He noticed how worried I was and said that what he could do to help me was to give me his coffee to sell in the USA.  This was February 2007. He told me,  there would a Specialty Coffee Association Convention in Long Beach, CA, why dont I try and get a booth???So I did....

Joy Brazil Coffee and how we found our roaster!

Most of  my life, I trusted the power of the universe. Sometimes I doubt it, just to be proven wrong in the the next minute.  The whole idea of My Brazilian Coffee was a sequence of coincidences that made me a greater believer that things are the way they need to be, and things happen when they need to happen.  This was an amazing one: I went to Virginia, Gordonsville,  to my cousin's farm for Thanksgiving 2007.   The farm is beautiful and very peacefull. I invited several friends to the weekend, and one of them was flying to Charlottesville. (The reason I am  telling all the details, is so that you have an idea of the sequence of events in order for something to happen the way it should).  Kasey's flight was late out of New York, so she missed the connection in North Carolina. She rented a car and drove 12 hours to get to Gordonsville. Next day, Trish and I went to return the car and after that we were going to meet everyone at the James Madison house for a tour.  When we arrived at the house, I found  out that Polly was not feeling well and did not come, so I decided to go home and check on her. Got there, she was feeling better and did not want to go to the James Madison home tour. Instead, she wanted to buy a flapper for the downstairs bath room that was always running.  We drove to the Gordonsville post office and asked where could we find a Houseware store.  The woman told us to drive to James Madison highway, there would be a big sign of the Houseware store.  Off we went, got the store and it seemed closed. It was the day after Thanksgiving.  We kept walking around trying to find the entrance, when suddenly a little door opened. This man came out and asked if he could help us???We said we were looking for a toilette flapper! He then looked at us and said: I am sorry I cannot help, I am a coffee roaster!!!! Do I need to finish the story!!!

Why MyBrazilianCoffee.com

I have been living in America for the past 20 years.  Even with all the boom in the gourmet coffee industry, I was never able to go to a Starbucks, a Dunkin Donuts and ask for a Brazilian Coffee,  I could have Colombian, Ethiopia, Jamaican, Kona etc etc. But never Brazilian. Trying to buy Brazilian Gourmet Coffee was the same experience. I went to several "Gourmet Markets" in New York and there was never Brazilian Gourmet Coffee. I could find "Brazil Santos" , but for me "Brazil Santos" is a commodity coffee that is shipped out of the Santos Port in Brazil.  Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world. At least 10% of the whole production is considered Gourmet, so if Brazil produced 37.5 million bags of coffee in 2007, there are at least 3.75 million bags of Gourmet Coffee coming from there. Where is this coffee???who is drinking it??( each bag of coffee is 60 kg or 132 lb) 

Organic Controversy

The organic word is in everyone's mouth nowadays; from coffee to produce to fish to meat to everything. Coffee plantations take a lot from the soil.  After years of harvesting without replenishing the land, it must rest for years before you can use it again.  The coffee  trees don't get any help, so the coffee, even though it is hand picked, does not look the best.  The trees are usually shade grown.  Productivity is very low compared to other ways of growing coffee. I guess my thought about  is if it is really a good thing.  Does it really taste better? it is worth the price? I am all for respecting  environment, but I do ask myself if organic grown coffee is really helping the earth????

Welcome to Brazil Blends!!!

Being raised in Brazil, coffee was always part of my daily life.

Not until recently though I started to learn all the nuances about this so intriguing grain, that needs a special climate, an especial location and can replicate in so many different forms and species.

Coffee was originally discovered in Ethiopia around 575; the story goes that a priest was looking at a goat, and noticed how energetic the goat would become, after eating that fruit, he then took the fruit to the monastery. There he thought that the taste of the fruit was too bitter so he roasted it. The aroma he felt was exhilarating.

Café was brought to Brazil on the XVIII century. The story goes that governor of a province in Brazil asked that a major in the army bring some seeds to the country. The major went to an expedition in the French Guyana and there, he got the seeds.

Brazil is today the largest producer of coffee and the second consumer market, behind only the USA.

Coffee comes in 2 species, “Robusta” and “Arabica”. The Robusta species is the cheap one. Brands usually mix it in the blends so that coffee can be more affordable to the masses. The Arabica coffee is what we call the specialty coffee. (Not all Arabica is specialty).

Within the Arabica species, we have several types of grains, which make coffee so unique.

Depending on the region where it is grown the coffee tastes differently, Compared to wine, coffee taste and aroma changes with the region, the climate and the altitude of where is grown.

The harvesting is also different depending on the country. So for example a Sumatra coffee in May be able to taste better than a Sumatra coffee in November, depending when the harvest was done.

In August one may be better of drinking Brazil coffee rather than Colombia coffee…there is so many variations to coffee that only now people are beginning to get educate on what a good cup of coffee should be.

In order to better develop the specialty coffee market, the Cup of Excellence award was created. The Cup of excellence takes place in each coffee producer country, where judges from all over the world volunteer their time and their money to travel and cup the coffees.

Those coffees are given a grade and after that the better ones receive the cup of excellence award; they then receive a logo that can be used on their packaging.

This coffee can be sold by the farm by values that goes up to $1,000.00 a 60kg bag, and is consider the Chateneaef Du Pape of coffees.

The development of the specialty coffee market is having a positive effect in the way coffee is grown, the farm is taken care and most important, making sure the small farmers have the opportunity to profit from the care they have during their harvest.


All of what is called specialty coffee must be free of defect and receives a grade of 80 or higher during cupping.

As this market evolves, more and more people will be looking for the difference in the coffee they drink, making sure that this continues to be a market in expansion.