A medium-bodied coffee, Facenda Nova Aliança brings together the nutty and the aromatic, with a scent of banana toffee, a hint of rose water, and walnut and marzipan flavours. The coffee varietals are mainly Yellow Catuai, Yellow Bourbon and Mundo Novo.
The farm is near the small Brazilian town of Monte Santo de Minas, a few hours’ drive north of Sao Paolo. The family is right into natural processing – one of the things we really love about them – and the beans are dried by a combination of traditional patio drying and mechanical dryers. These last two seasons, Nova Aliança farm has set up even bigger patios for drying, new wooden silos, and a tree regeneration programme. In fact, only half of the farm is used to grow coffee, with the rest used for pasture and forests.
Flavio, one of the owners, is a fully-trained agronomist who farms the land with his wife and daughter. He’s got a just outstanding level of knowledge about coffee, farming and what’s going on at Nova Aliança, right down to the minute details of rainfall, temperatures, lot yields and pruning schedules. The family’s superior skills and attention to detail mean the end result is coffee with consistent quality year, upon year, upon year.
The farm is divided into many small sections. During harvest, beans from each section are handled separately through the production process. This includes samples being cupped, and then the lots are blended to get the required quality and flavour profiles. It’s coffee harvest season in Brazil now, so very soon we’ll be sampling the latest Nova Aliança beans at Switch.
Roasting this coffee offers different options to change up the profile and how the flavours are presented. Its core characteristics hold a mild and enjoyable fruity acidity that leads into a well-bodied coffee with a long mouth-feel and caramelly sweetness.
