Sítio Pico do Boné, Junior Martins, Red Catuaí - Natural - Brazil

This coffee is a beautiful example of our approach to sourcing because it embodies three things we care deeply about: Quality, Relationship, and Impact.

In the fall of 2023, Little Waves co-owner and green coffee buyer Areli Barrera Grodski traveled with BD Imports to Matas de Minas to visit producers participating in the Black Brazilian Producers Program. We met many skilled and knowledgeable coffee producers who, as families, steward their farms with incredible care and dedication, often incorporating sustainable and organic practices into their work.

One of the farms we visited was Sítio Pico do Boné, a gorgeous, lush 15-hectare farm that feels like a true oasis. We were welcomed with fruit grown right on their land—passion fruit, bananas, enormous avocados, loquats, and citrus—and spent the day walking the farm and learning about the family’s history, their coffee, and their vision for the future.

Coffee runs four generations deep in the Aparecida family. Junior’s parents, Abraão da Silva and Dona Aparecida Martins, were the first generation to move from sharecropping to owning their own land. It took years of sacrifice and determination.

Cristiene, Junior’s sister, told us that her father would load his ox cart and make the two-hour round trip to the family’s farm, carrying about 100 coffee plants at a time. Dona Aparecida remembers that he sometimes made as many as five trips in a single day. Together, the family planted 12,000 coffee trees this way. Today, the farm is home to around 40,000 trees.

You can feel the history of that work when you walk through Sítio Pico do Boné—the passion, love, sweat, blood, and tears that have gone into building this farm. The coffee plants thrive from it.

Abraão passed away in 2016, but his legacy continues through his children. Today, Junior, Cristiene, and their family are investing in specialty coffee, working toward exporting their coffees for higher premiums while also developing their own roasting and coffee brand. Their pursuit is not simply about producing better coffee, but about creating greater opportunity and value for the family farm.

This particular lot is steeped in history, tradition and a deep love for coffee as it was planted by Dona Aparecida and Sô Abraão with great affection, dedication, and care at every stage. The high elevation, cool climate, and stony soils of the farm provide an ideal environment for coffee, while Juninho (Junior) and Edlaine (Junior's wife) continue to tend the farm throughout the growing season.

The cherries were handpicked by Juninho and Edlaine and carefully dried by hand on a concrete patio. The coffee undergoes a natural fermentation during drying, without any additives, preserving the character and quality of the fruit.

In the cup, all of this work comes together in a coffee that is comforting yet expressive: hazelnut and milk chocolate meet the sweet, juicy flavors of loquat, canned pear, and Honeycrisp apple.

For us, this is what sourcing is about: building relationships that allow us to discover exceptional coffees, paying attention to the people and places behind them, and supporting producers as they build greater value and opportunity around their work.