Jaguara / Brazil

Fazenda Jaguara was established in 2001, when three friends—Antonio Wander, Rubem Carlos, and Rubem Murilo—planted their first coffee trees in Campo das Vertentes, Minas Gerais. The name Jaguara was borrowed from the Quilombola community that lives in the area.

The three founders came from backgrounds in agronomy and research, so from the very beginning, Jaguara was a farm where learning happened through practice. They began growing coffee because they wanted to understand how cultivation in the field, the surrounding environment, and post-harvest care would ultimately reveal themselves in the cup. In 2013, Antonio handed the farm over to André Luiz Garcia and Natália Brito. Since then, the couple have continued to experiment with new production methods while farming in a way that minimises their impact on the surrounding environment.

For generations, the family has been involved in both coffee production and coffee research. Antonio's grandfather, Alexander Capelo Garcia, was a small-scale coffee producer. Antonio himself worked as an agronomist at the Brazilian Coffee Institute (IBC), specialising in soil fertility and plant nutrition. He is said to have devoted his life to understanding and growing coffee.

The farm lies about 200 kilometres south of the state capital, Belo Horizonte, just outside the city of São João del-Rei. Known for gold mining, the city played a major role in colonial Brazil, but the surrounding area was not traditionally a coffee-growing region. Its mountainous terrain and relatively high elevation for Brazil, however, proved well suited to the coffee trees introduced later.

Campo das Vertentes is not one of Brazil's highest-elevation coffee regions, but at 1,040 metres, Jaguara occupies relatively high ground within the area. “Vertentes” means “watersheds”, and the land is said to owe its fertile soil to its position between two major drainage basins. Coffees from this region are known for their sweetness, well-rounded body, and notes reminiscent of chocolate and nuts.

Natália is a second-generation producer who also runs her own export company, Jaguara. She originally worked in the commodity coffee market. Believing that their coffees deserved greater recognition, she invited other small producers in the area to join her in moving towards a market where coffee is selected for its flavour. The people who grow the coffee also choose where it is sold. Because Natália cups the coffees herself, what she tastes feeds directly back into the following year's production. To us, that is what makes Jaguara so compelling. She is also active in Brazil's specialty coffee community, visiting producers across the country to exchange knowledge.

André is an agronomist who specialises in pruning. Decisions such as which branches to remove and how much sunlight to let into the tree may seem modest, but they change how the cherries ripen and ultimately make a clear difference in the cup. The farm grows only varieties with a long history in Brazil, such as Yellow Bourbon and Mundo Novo. Rather than relying on rare varieties for novelty, Jaguara improves quality through the accumulated effect of careful daily work.

The couple often say that quality comes from observation and experimentation. They go into the fields believing that every harvest has something new to teach them. Jaguara began as a farm that learned by doing, and that spirit has remained unchanged since 2001.