Volcanic formation is the base of special coffee in Minas Gerais and São Paulo

A volcanic formation more than 80 million years old is the base that producers in 12 cities in Minas Gerais and São Paulo have used to grow coffee and sell collectively.

In an area of ​​800 square kilometers, which includes mountain ranges of the Mantiqueira mountain range and altitudes that reach 1,500 m, having as its main city Poços de Caldas (MG), the coffee growers produce a bean that is notable for having citrus characteristics that are more present than in other regions, with a tendency towards fruits such as pineapple, passion fruit and orange.

The body is creamy, dense and with a long finish, according to agronomist Leandro Paiva, professor at the Federal Institute of Sul de Minas and who has been involved in the development process of coffee in the volcanic region.

The area encompasses eight cities in Minas Gerais (in addition to Poços, Andradas, Bandeira do Sul, Botelhos, Ibitiúra de Minas, Cape Verde, Caldas and Campestre) and four cities in São Paulo (São Sebastião da Grama, Divinolândia, Caconde and Águas da Prata), and collective coffee brand already covers 400 producers. The goal is to end next year with a thousand members, out of a universe of 12 thousand coffee growers — most of them family farming.

The embryo of the project emerged ten years ago. The coffee was already there, of course, but the proposal to create a brand exploring the characteristics of the region began in 2011 in a course by Paiva himself.

“In the course, the discussion about the richness of the volcanic soil arose. It was a wealth that we had, but we were not exploring. In addition, working in the region, we saw that there were several properties, farms, doing work, seeking quality coffee, a differential in the market, but each one isolated, each one for itself,” said Ulisses Ferreira, executive director of the Volcanic Region Coffee Producers Association.

Discussions deepened and the brand was officially launched a year ago, at SIC (International Coffee Week), in Belo Horizonte, in a virtual edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

At this year’s event, between November 10th and 12th, the production of coffee in a soil like the one on the border between the states was the subject of a panel at the end of the event.

“It’s an 80-million-year-old caldera, extinct, the soil rose, 800 square kilometers in area and behind that came a very fertile soil, very rich, with altitude, mild temperatures at night, radiation [solar] very high during the day,” said Marco Sanches, president of the association.

This framework makes the terroir different from that which exists in other specialty coffee producing regions in the country. Spread over 12 states, the main regions are vying for a market that should consume 1.1 million tonnes of roasted coffee this year, according to data from Euromonitor, a company that carries out market research.

“Poços is not big, but the region is. The soil is very fertile and the cafes manage to extract a completely different terroir from all this,” said Sanches.

Rich in potassium and phosphorus, although the soil has the volcanic terroir in common in all the cities, almost 30 types of soil were found just on the edges of the volcanic caldera, according to Paiva.

“We thought we would find a volcanic terroir, but we found several […] We are working on this issue to see if we will arrive at a unique characteristic, so that in the future, perhaps, we may seek a designation of origin for this coffee,” he said.

The designation of origin designates a product whose quality is due to the environment in which it is located. It is different from the so-called indication of origin, which refers to a place or region that has become known as the center of production of something.

Paiva said that, for now, the creation of the collective coffee brand fits better with the proposal of the region’s coffee growers.