Falling within Brazils famous Cerrado that makes up nearly 23% of the entire
country, Daterra are the world’s first grade A rainforest certified farm of any
business, and a walk around the trees will reveal a stunning array of birds and
.wildlife, from toucans and burrowing owls to squirrel monkeys and maned wolves
Over 60% of the land they own is given over to nature reserves. The farm itself is
split into many lots, each with a designated agronomist to care for the particular
varietal and aspect each lot defines. With over 100 different varietals on their
farms, development is tracked and planting paired with appropriate varietal.
Selective mechanical picking is common in Brazil and occurs typically with 40
60% ripe coffee on the tree, with 5% green, 10% underripe, and the rest tree dried.
A sample will be picked, processed and roasted to check taste is as expected
before the order is given to pick the specific lot. Sorting is done on a specially
adapted wet mill, first with density sorting that removes overripes, then with the
drier and natural beans being sorted very specifically by size from each lot. The
tree dried beans are left to almost fully dry on a large concrete patio before
being finished in a Guardiola to ensure consistency throughout the lot, whilst
pulped raisins are the slightly drier ripe beans, adding a little more sweetness
to the cup and requiring mechanical pulping, before also being briefly dried on
the patio before being finished in a Guardiola to ensure precise moisture levels
throughout. By cupping all the variables, the tasting team are then able to precisely pick the
components that make up each blend, to ensure the consistency of flavour profile
required. For this reason, the varietals can vary slightly, as selection is done
on flavour profile rather than by varietal type. For Moonlight, that is molasses,
ripe yellow fruits with rounded body. Beans are size, density and electronic
pentachromatically sorted and packed in to 24.2kg Penta Boxes, a packaging
system created by Daterra themselves in order to preserve the quality of green
.for as long as possible