Luiz Paulo Pereira

Santuario Sul and CarmoCoffees; Carmo de Minas, Minas Gerais, Brazil

While the coffee industry hangs on Brazil’s every major move—the sheer annual production volume from this country actually swings the pendulum of supply, demand, and price of almost all coffees everywhere—sometimes it’s the smallest ones that make the most impact. In Carmo de Minas, some of the most micro innovations are happening thanks in part to Luiz Paulo Pereira, a multigenerational coffee producer and forward-thinking exporter. Luiz Paulo has a two-fold focus on specialty and quality, through his work with CarmoCoffees, and on his own farm, Santuario Sul.

CarmoCoffees, which Luiz Paulo cofounded with his cousin Jacques Pereira Carneiro, is an exporting and quality-development company that works with more than 2,000 small- and midsize farm owners in Carmo de Minas, Brazil. The family-like community CarmoCoffees has created, along with the agronomic and sensory support the cousins’ operation provides their partners, has created a dynamic and growing reputation for high-end microlot-quality coffee from Brazil—something otherwise practically unheard of in the local landscape.

Luiz Paulo’s own farm Santuario Sul—one of many owned by Pereira and his extended family in the region—is something of an experimental breeding ground as well, as he has planted a collection of varieties that are exotic, exciting, unusual, and certainly exclusive to this land in Brazil. Among the most interesting of the coffees growing here are the African varieties, heirlooms that bring delicate fruit and floral qualities to a part of the country known for its nutty, chocolate, and heavy flavors.