By the late 1830s coffee had surpassed sugar as Brazil’s most important export crop. Production was centered on large plantations using slave labor in the valley of the Paraiba River, west of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Later it was expanding onto southern Minas Gerais and western Sao Paulo.
The Brazilian, commonly called Rio coffee, it berry is of medium size, greenish color and appears rusted with specks of gray. It is not a fine flavored coffee, having a good deal of acridness, but it is in favor with farmers generally because “it goes farther than mild coffee.”
Normally Rio coffees improved with age, as they are naturally strong and earthy. Age might be expected to soften and to mellow them. It should be roasted very evenly, of a light brown color, and used very soon afterward as it loses value every day after it is roasted and after it is ground oit will become almost worthless by a few days’ exposure to the air.
After 1850 Brazil led the world in coffee production. The coffee plantation of the mid-nineteenth century was the political economic and social core of Brazil.
History of Rio coffee
