Ферма Монте Алегре вече е утвърден и добре известен производител на кафе в района на Южен Minas Gerais, когато семейство Виейра придобива имота през 1917 г. Днес фокусът е единствено върху производството на висококачествено специално кафе със социална отговорност и опазване на околната среда. Тази партида е обрапотена чрез сух процес - Pulped natural
Monte Alegre is a fourth-generation family farm in the Sul de Minas region of Minas Gerais. The estate has been run by the Vieira family for 101 years and boy, do they know how to do coffee! The huge estate sets a model for the technologically advanced, sustainable production of quality coffees.
Monte Alegre Coffee is dedicated to preserving the environment and engages in recycling water, conscious use of energy, reforestation and management of fertilizer and of solid and liquid waste. Data collectors register the entire production process from the field to the mill and drying patio. The detailed data are registered to provide full traceability behind each quality. This allows the team at Monte Alegre to understand why a certain coffee show certain characteristics, or what to attribute these to. They record anything relating to agricultural practices, harvest times, processing, drying method and period, storage and cup results. Quality and socio-environmental respect An effective management system promotes a process of continuous improvement, towards sustainable agriculture, and meets the requirements for international certifications. In this way, the estate produces a safe and traceable product to the consumers.
Monte Alegre invests in a modern agronomic monitoring system to protect the environment. Measures such as recycling water, septic tanks, reforestation, conscious use of energy, integrated management of solid and liquid waste, wastewater usage for irrigation, fertilizer management and vehicle fleet review, among others, are taken. Over 20% from the farm area consists of Legal Reserve and Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs) that contribute to the biodiversity conservation, ecosystems and water resources. On social aspects, Monte Alegre has the goal to protect the human well-being and workers’ rights, looking for the improvement of life standard.
Since Monte Alegre is such a huge coffee estate on relatively flat terrain, machines can harvest the rows of coffee trees. Similar to what you see in vineyards, these machines strip the ripe cherries from the branches. They can be finetuned to apply more or less pressure. With less pressure, most of the unripe cherries will still resist and cling to the branches, while the ripe cherries come off easily. Prior to processing, cherries are cleaned by a ventilating and shaking machine to remove branches and leaves. A flotation step separates the ripe cherries from, green and semi-dry cherries by density. Another machine can separate the cherries by size and colour. In the wet process, the cherries can be pulped. The unripe ones with harder pulp are not pulped and the ripe ones with soft pulp are pulped by a pressure system. The pulped ripe cherries result in pulped natural coffee. The mucilage can be removed by biological fermentation in water tanks resulting in fully washed coffee, or in a demucilator machine resulting in semi-washed coffee.
Monte Alegre Coffees adopts techniques for reusing water to reduce its wastewater production and water consumption.
