Daterra Farms is a remarkable force in the Brazilian coffee world, and the entire coffee world in general. Here we find one of the most innovative coffee cultivators, where each step is scrutinized, rethought, reinvented. It is more of a coffee research institute than a farm! Well, that's not true ... like all farms the coffee tree predominates, but here we have each plot marked off in terms of what "experiment" is currently being conducted to improve cup quality. When I visited there were plots of huge 20 foot tall "native" coffee trees, then pure Catuai cultivar areas, Icatu, Mundo Novo and other cultivars I have never encountered. And then there were the old traditional cultivars, Typica and pure Yellow Bourbon. They blend the various plots, like a vintner might blend their grapes from within a farm, to get the desired results. They sell these blends (such as Sweet Collection, Reserve, Santa Columba, etc) but I usually prefer the pure Yellow Bourbon cultivar over the others. Interestingly, this year along with the YB coffee, the Sweet Blue Daterra was a real standout. It was sweeter, yes, as the name suggests, and really nicely prepared using the Penta system preparation. What's Penta? It's Daterra's system to sort coffee under ultraviolet light, with added defect removal steps, store in special warehouses optimized for coffee, locking in the moisture content in the green coffee with vacuum packaging, boxing and shipping. Perhaps it is the future of green coffee and we certainly are investing a lot in the vac pack, primarily because coffee must be transported through humid zones in the origin country and (especially if the container of traditional burlap bags gets waylaid at port) can result in the coffee taking on moisture; it's a bad thing. I think it's part of why Daterras arrive so nice and fresh; when done right, vac-packing at origin in the best.