Every place you visit holds a special place in your heart when it comes to specialty coffee.  We’ve visited Carmo more than any other place when it comes to our specialty coffee journey and seeing that mars-like soil, the incredible scale of coffee, and the wonderful people will never get old for us. Part of having such longevity when it comes to these relationships, is that you get to see innovations happen at conception and then you get to see how they play out over the years. Case in point, a Gesha coffee from Brazil.

There’s not enough time to go into the storied history of Gesha coffee here, but regardless to say, it’s wild. What started as a whim turned into a global varietal sensation and has inspired a revolution when it comes to specialty coffee. Carmo planted this current Gesha crop around 4-6 years ago and this is one of the first crops to make it out for export. Just like the paradox of things being both complex and simple at the same time, this coffee exists firmly in both camps. On one hand, the nuanced florals and almost cherry-like acidity belies what you’d expect from a coffee from Brazil, and yet the comforting tones of brown sugar, cola nut, and carmel-like sweetness remind you that we haven’t somehow reached escape velocity from Brazil’s massive gravitational pull.