D R Wakefield is our importing partner predominantly for coffees from Brazil and Costa Rica. They are a privately owned family business dating back to 1970, and a certified B-Corp who, like ourselves, are very much focussed on building long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with the producers that they work with. They import and facilitate relationships with a number of coffees that underpin our offering, including those from Daterra and Baixadão in Brazil, and from Coope Dota in Costa Rica.
Our visits to Daterra in particular have culminated in an exciting project whereby we have been offered a plot at the farm on which to conduct an agricultural experiment of our own devising. We have selected a plot of arara that is currently blighted by nematode worms, and have inocluated the soil with various strains of fungi with a view to observing the effect this has on the nematode population, and the productivity and sensory profile of the arara crop. Sharing the coffee from the harvest of Our Plot is one of the real highlights of the year for us, and we are excited to see how the project develops over the years to come.