Sitio Vargem Grande and Café Galante are located in a mountainous region, with humid air. The humid air prolongs the drying process of coffee cherries, which results in boosting the quality, as the sugars present in the coffee have more time to ferment.
In their natural process, after the coffee is harvested, it dries on a concrete floor for 20-30 days and then it is used artificial electric dryer in the finalization, till the coffee reaches 12% of humidity. They also dry coffees under the shadow in a greenhouse, and others in African beds covered with cloth to protect from the cold.
Sitio Vargem Grande has 18 hectares and Sitio Café Galante has 14 hectares. Nowadays they both produce the varieties: Red and Yellow Catuaí, CatuCai, and Yellow Caturra.
Renato Assumpção is the youngest producer from the last generation, the son of Mrs. Aparecida dos Santos and he is already a Q-Arabica Grader. He cups the coffees of all families, and it helps them to identify which varieties have a greater potential in each crop. They are all part of a group of producers of the same family, who help each other. Each one has different tools and types of equipment used in coffee processing, like a washing tank, pulping machine (which controls the level of pulp for the honey process), and barrels for fermentation.
30% of their crop is hand-picked and 70% is partially manual picked (with manual tools), but nothing is harvested with harvesters, due to the inclination/geographic position of the land, in high altitude, which also contributes to quality as in this way they can pick only extremely ripe cherries. The family shares knowledge among the group, and they combine their methods of processing aiming to achieve the best results.
