Volume. Cheap. Lame flavours. This is the traditional way of growing coffee in Brazil, and almost every farm does it this way. 

But what if you wanted to produce beautiful, distinctive flavours instead—and make a living from it?

In this episode, we travel to Fazenda Paraíso in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where farmer Vicente Pereira and his daughter are on a steep learning curve finding buyers for their beautiful coffees. 

Part 1 unravels the hidden structures of Brazil’s coffee industry: how prices are set, why it’s so hard to create a specialty-focused farm, and why Vicente's farm is unsustainable if he sells his coffee the traditional way. 

Behind every beautiful coffee is a family story like this, but it’s a story we rarely get to see close up. 

Let’s take a closer look.

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Listen to Firefly to hear a cautionary tale about a specialty farm failing because they couldn't find the right buyers.

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Season 3 of The Science of Coffee is made possible by these leading coffee organizations:

The Coffee Quest | BWT | TODDY | Algrano | Probat