Flores de Ilicínea: specialty with a sustainable heart

Quality, sustainable practices, respecting nature and everyone involved in the production

We have the pleasure of presenting the new specialty coffee of our friends Lilian Trigolo and Márcia Amaral.
Lilian Trigolo and Márcia Amaral are two small coffee farmers in Brazil in the southern region of Minas Gerais called Ilicínea, who in these complex and challenging times together launched a brand of specialty coffee “Flores de Ilicínea Cafés Especiais“. They wanted to reinvent themselves and encourage other women to also seek their space in coffee production.

Each package takes a little bit of their history from two different farms at high altitude: Lilian’s farm “São José” and Márcia’s “São Judas Tadeu” came together to create a new brand of specialty coffee, bringing quality to coffee lovers through sustainable practices respecting nature and everyone involved in the production.
The name Flores de Ilicínea is a tribute to all the beautiful flowers of our region, and especially to all the warrior and courageous women of the countryside who never give up on their dreams, and it gives everyone strength and determination in every approach to their day to day lives.
At Flores de Ilicínea Cafés Especiais manual harvesting is used to ensure the quality of the coffee: dry, damaged or green beans will not be mixed with the rest of the harvest.

Only ripe cherry beans are removed from the crop, so that by this method the removed beans generally become high quality grains depending on the terroir of each region and the care taken during harvest and post-harvest.
In Flores de Ilicínea coffee dry processing (natural) is used, which involves the drying of ripe cherry beans whole.
Care is taken so that the beans are protected from rain and, in order to dry, exposed on a suspended coffee terrace in sunlight and wind, and rotated at least 10 times a day so that the heat reaches them in the right way, namely as uniformly as possible.
During the coffee drying process, an important characteristic is the moisture content, which must be between 11 and 12% according to the coffee variety.

The coffee beans are then dried in a static dryer at a temperature of 35 degrees for 3 days. Then, the grains are left to rest for 60 days before being processed (peeled). When the coffee is completely dry, it is time to remove the last layers of dry skin and any traces of fruit.
The coffee is then cleaned: impurities such as earth, sticks, leaves and stones are separated, passing through a set of sieves of different sizes and types of holes, before the peel is removed. The two small farms combined produced 180 60kg-bags.
After Lilian and her partner Márcia Amaral have selected by hand the best 100% Arabica beans, the result is 84-point coffee like this first edition of the cultivar (variety) Mundo Novo. In fact, in the Sensory Evaluation Methodology SCA (Specialty Coffee Association), this coffee presented an incredible sensory analysis with notes of dulce de leche and ripe apple resulting in incredible sweetness in the cup.
The differential of their coffee is the transparency in the processes we share through their Instagram @floresdeilicineacafes, connecting directly with producers, roasters and coffee shops, always sharing the quality of the coffee, the surrounding nature and their sustainable practices.