Dulce Souza and Sítio Belém: Five Generations of Coffee in Campestre
Some farms have histories. Sítio Belém has a dynasty. Five generations of the Franco family have grown coffee in and around Campestre, in the south of Minas Gerais, and the thread running from Dulce Souza's great-great-grandfather right through to the cup you're holding today is unbroken. What began as one family working the land in the 1800s has become one of the region's most decorated coffee operations – and, through the Matura Project and Dulce's own leadership, a story that's very much still unfolding.
The Land: Volcanic, High-Altitude, and Built for Coffee
Campestre sits within a remarkable stretch of territory that straddles the southern edge of Minas Gerais and the north-west of São Paulo. The soils here are volcanic, formed from the caldera of an extinct volcano that last erupted around 80 million years ago. That geological inheritance – mineral-rich, deep, and well-draining – gives the region a terroir quite distinct from the broader Sul de Minas landscape. It's one of twelve municipalities formally demarcated and protected by the Association of Producers of the Coffees from the Volcanic Region (Cafés da Região Vulcânica), a designation that recognises what growers in this area have always known: something particular happens to coffee when it's grown here.
At 1,100 to 1,200 metres above sea level, Sítio Belém sits at the upper end of the altitude range for Sul de Minas. The climate is mild, with well-defined wet and dry seasons that allow cherries to ripen slowly and evenly. One harvest a year, between June and September, and every cherry hand-picked. There are no shortcuts at this elevation, and the farm doesn't look for any.
A Family History Written in Coffee
The story begins in 1762, when the first road crossed the region of Campestre – at that point home to just three farms: Peão, Vanglória, and Cachoeira. That road opened the area up to trade, and within a century the Franco family were farming it. By 1859, Dulce's great-great-grandfather had established Fazenda Mato Dentro, beginning a family legacy that has never stopped growing.
In 1878, Dulce's great-grandfather João Manoel Franco planted his first coffee trees at Fazenda Pinhal do Campestre – one of the very first farms to cultivate the crop in what would eventually become the world's most productive coffee region. That same year saw the birth of Dulce's grandmother, and the two events – a planting and a birth, both carrying forward into the future – are why Dulce named her specialty coffee brand 1878.
A further branch of the family's coffee story was added in 1891 with Fazenda Pinhal, which brought a period of real prosperity: running water, telephones, machinery. Dulce's grandfather expanded production further still, planting 160,000 coffee trees across the family's land. Getting the crop to market in those days meant three ox-cart routes to Poços de Caldas – a punishing journey – until the purchase of a Dodge truck made the same trip possible in a single day. That truck, that small victory of logistics over geography, is the kind of detail that makes a century-old farming story feel entirely real.
In 1990, Dulce and her husband Ablandino founded Sítio Belém itself, carving the farm from the family's older holdings. The name comes from the Hebrew Bethlehem – House of Bread – and carries a quiet sense of what this land has always provided: sustenance, continuity, something worth passing on. It's a relatively compact 20 hectares by Brazilian standards, but in Dulce's hands it produces around 600 hand-picked 60-kilo bags a year, and punches well above its weight on the cupping table.
The Varieties: A Carefully Tended Portfolio
The range of varieties at Sítio Belém reflects the breadth of Dulce's approach to quality: Mundo Novo, Arara, Geisha, Paraíso, Rubi, and the award-winning Catiguá, alongside the Yellow Catucaí we're featuring here. Each brings something different to the farm's overall character, and Dulce manages them with the kind of attention to detail that only comes from decades of intimate knowledge of your land.
Yellow Catucaí is a particularly interesting variety in the context of Brazilian specialty coffee. It's a naturally occurring cross between Icatu and Catuaí, first selected in 1988 by researchers at the Brazilian Coffee Institute. The breeding programme set out to combine Catuaí's compact size and good cup potential with Icatu's vigour and disease resistance – and that's exactly what they got. Yellow Catucaí is hardy, productive, and moderately resistant to coffee leaf rust, which makes it well-suited to quality-focused smallholder farming where there's little margin for lost yield. In the cup, it tends toward sweetness and body, with a creamy, rounded mouthfeel that suits natural processing particularly well – which is exactly how Dulce processes hers.
Recognition and the Matura Project
Dulce's coffees have been recognised at regional level for years. In 2021, Sítio Belém was announced champion of the Campestre quality contest, competing against a strong field of local producers. The coffees consistently score above 85 on the SCAA scale, and the Catiguá variety in particular has a strong track record on the awards circuit.
We came across Sítio Belém through the Matura Project, a pioneering initiative launched in 2024 by Bourbon Specialty Coffees to support and champion female producers across Brazil. We know Bourbon's work well – they're behind our long-standing relationships at Cachoeira, Inglaterra, and Barreiro – so when they put something in front of us, we pay attention. We tried a handful of coffees from the participating farms, and this one stopped us in our tracks.
The Matura Project is open to farms owned by women, with women in management, and with women overseeing selection and post-harvest production. It's more than a label. The programme offers post-harvest and fermentation training that respects each producer's individual identity and the unique potential of their coffee; cupping sessions where producers learn to evaluate their own harvests; technical farm visits and microlot selection guidance; and dedicated promotion designed to connect women producers with new markets. The goal is a genuine collaborative network – somewhere producers can share knowledge, innovate, and receive the recognition their work deserves.
Dulce herself puts the philosophy behind Sítio Belém more simply and more powerfully than any coffee description could: "We treat this piece of land as something almost sacred, God's creation and a legacy from our parents to us. We respect nature and the people involved in our activity, from production to the consumer." Five generations in, that commitment hasn't dimmed. It's there in every bag.
