Sunday, February 05, 2006


direct from brazil!

i had coffee at gimme in yesterday evening bklyn with kevin cuddeback and one maria fernanda mazucco. fernanda has married a wall st. financier, and now lives here in bklyn.

fernanda is on the board of the brazilian barista championship group, where she came to know long-time bccy barista-type pals, such as cindy chang of counterculture and barista goddess sherri johns, as well as cupping judges like andrew b. of ecco, and naturally former scaa prez and greenie christian wolthers.

besides being a member of the brazilian specialty coffee association, she was also associated with the brazilian cup of excellence group. before leaving brazil, she worked for astro cafe.

as a result, fernanda knows everything about brazilian coffee from the inside. she's been in the states about a month.

she wants to do several interesting things. for example, get small roasters in direct contact with small specialty brazilian producers. she believes independent specialty roasters would like to have direct contact with the growers of specialty coffee, and she'd like to help make that happen somehow sometime soon.

she noted that many coffees do well in the brazil c.o.e., but only the top set really sell well at auction. that leaves quite a few coffees that cup well without buyers despite being c.o.e.

these coffees, still quite lovely specialty coffees, have no way to find their way to specialty consumers, like us here at bccy. they are also great for roasters who would like to enter the c.o.e. space at a price more in tune with their budgets than US$50.  

she would also like to help brazilian baristi and american baristi develop relationships.  

i found fernanda lovely, charming, and completely passionate about specialty coffee. she was thrilled to see the gimme mirage machine and adored the leftist cappuccino with a perfect heart peter poured for her.

she later took a single origin shot of kenya. i have introduced her to nick cho, but i think there are a quite few people who would like to meet fernanda.

she is very close to a coffee agronomist whose job is to locate young farmers with potential and help them grow their quality. she is also close to a person involved in the demeter group and has an interest in biodynamic coffee.

if anyone's interested in being introduced to fernanda, email me. she's serious, and appears to be the real deal.

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