The Coffees of Rwanda, East Africa

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Africa: Rwanda

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Current Crop Comments:

In August 2008, I was part of the first ever Cup of Excellence competition in Rwanda, and while I doubted that our coffees would ever arrive, they finally did in January and we sold out of it by early summer. We may see new crop Rwandan by late fall early winter; for now, the logistics of getting coffee out of the country is the biggest obstacle.

Check out Bikes to Rwanda website, a great program. Sweet Maria's donated funds for 25 cargo bikes to be shipped to coffee farmers through this program in 2008.Also see the coffee bike program at the Project Rwanda site.

Rwandan coffee was, at one time, rarely seen in the United States as either a Specialty grade or low-end commercial coffee. There simply was not that much coffee produced in Rwanda that went anywhere besides one particular importer in Belgium, the former colonizer of the country. It is believed that coffee was introduced in Rwanda in 1904 by German missionaries. Around 1930, a considerable interest in coffee developed as it was the sole revenues generating commodity for rural families. The government encouraged (actually, they mandated) low quality, high-volume production. Even with this low grade coffee production, coffee played a considerable role in the economic development of the country because it was one of the few cash crops. But with the collapse of world coffee prices at the international market level, the push to export low grade arabica made less and less sense.

Rwanda has a huge quality advantage of growing 95% Bourbon cultivar coffees, including different strains (Jackson, POP, BM etc). Above, ripe Bourbon coffee cherry from my 2008 trip.

Typical washing station (wet mill). This is at Bufcafe, where our Butare coffee comes from. Washing stations are communal, and often used by more than one farm or cooperative. Here is info about the wet mill improvement project.

Our lot of Womens Coop Duhingekeni being sorted. I made a separate Duhingekawa page with additional photos and information about this group,

Then there was the genocide in the 90s, one of the most horrendous occurrences in modern history. It makes me dizzy just imagining how a country recovers, how people go back to a "normal" life after the tragedy of monumental scale. But the recovery in Rwanda has occurred with an unflinching openness to the genocide. (A personal thought: I think much of the world stood by because awareness of Rwanda was low, and self-interest in Rwanda was low. What did Rwanda produce and export that the world cared about? Clinton said so much at the time, and in retrospect regretted it as did other world leaders on whose watch the massacre happened. I feel that interest in Rwanda, awareness of their products and the people, would make another tragedy difficult to ignore, and coffee is a "gateway to the world" in that sense.)

Transportation is a probem with Rwanda coffee too. The coffee has historically been transported across Uganda to Mombasa, Kenya for shipment to Europe, a trip that can damage the coffee, and one that relies on economic and political stability in the region. The result is that the coffee cannot reach market, so the price and the incentive to produce top-grade coffee had diminished greatly for the village coffee farmer. That's why it comes as a very pleasant surprise to receive excellent Rwandan coffee from small-holder village coffee farms and small mills (called washing stations). The fact that rural people can tend their crops and get export prices for them is a good sign for Rwanda, and for us ... because this is an origin with great potential. Historically, Rwanda has been the 9th largest producer of arabica in Africa, with 500,000 small farms averaging less than 1 hectare each. Coffee is grown in the western part of the country and in the central area near the capital of Kigali. The eastern part of Rwanda, over 1/7th of the country, is set aside as a national park and there is no coffee production permitted.

Rwanda has a lot going for it: traditional cultivar, good altitude, and lots of willing advisors from USAID! It's a delicate coffee in some respects, cupped beside many Kenyas, but these subtle citric qualitites, interesting aromatics, and consistent high quality make it a much more interesting origin than Zambia and Zimbabwe at this point.

For many pictures and more information about Rwanda coffee, see my travelog when I was on the jury for the first-ever Rwanda Cup of Excellence competition in late August 2008.

Some general statistics:

Coffee is grown by small scale coffee farmers estimated at 400.000 in number, with an average of 165 coffee trees per farmer;
Only Arabica coffee varieties are grown, with the predominance of bourbon varieties, and small amounts of Caturra and Catuai mixed in.
Bourbon types include ; POP3303/21; Jackson 2/1257; BM 139.
Altitude range from 1200 to 1800 meters above sea level;
Rainfall range from 900 to 2200 mm per annum;
Soils are generally good, with high yield potential for coffee. About 30% of soils under coffee cultivation are of volcanic origin;
Cultivated area under coffee farming: 28,000 hectares;
Flowering: September - October;
Harvesting season: March - July;
Wet processing methods;
Caffeine content: 1.3%;

Our Rwanda Coffee Offerings: Please refer to our Reference Page for definitions of terms and cupping numbers used below. Check out the Sweet Maria's Coffee Home Roasting Forum for more conversation about home roasting this and other coffees.

Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza

This lot is from a cooperative washing station (a wet mill for coffee processing) in the region of Gikongoro, Nyarusiza, near Butare. It's part of the greater Bufcafe (Bufcoffee) coop ... however you put it, a clumsy name, But coops aren't about fancy romantic names, and Bufcafe had several top spots in the first-ever Rwanda Cup of Excellence this past year. Their coffees were consistently excellent, and I remember them well because I was there as a judge! And just to see the director of Bufcafe, a shy petite lady they call Epiphane, thunder down the aisle to claim the awards at the podium, it was worth the airfare to Africa! She is a force. This area, in southwestern Rwanda not far from Burundi, has some of the best coffee farming areas, featuring older types of the traditional Bourbon varietal. With a range of 1300 to 1600 meters, this lot of high grown Bourbon has a compact physical density that performs well in a variety of roast conditions, air roast or drum roast. The coffee is wet processed and dried immediately on raised beds in the African style, which promotes even, rapid drying (more-so than patio drying in many cases) because the air flows around the wet parchment coffee from above and below. It's ideal for this climate, and allows the coffee to be culled while it dries to remove defects. This is a classic Rwanda cup. The dry fragrance has a balanced sweetness, sweet bread and cinnamon, with spice tea dark aromas. Wet aromatics have rose-like floral notes, and caramelized cane sugar sweetness. This cup has lots of sweet mulling spices to it; dried orange peel, cinnamon bark, clove, allspice. There is sweet citrus in the lighter roasts, lemon oil, a bittersweet tea finish. It's very balanced; bittersweet roasty coffee flavors in proportion to fruit and aromatic grace notes. The body is not heavy, and yet it has a creamy texture to it, and there is a buttery quality that lingers into the finish. All of this adds up to a character much more restrained than a bright, flashy Kenya coffee, that has enough depth to discover new flavors with each brewing. Rose floral notes emerge as the cup cools. Keep tasting it, and you will find more to like in this lot... at least that is my experience. Contrary to other East Africa coffees, I think the Rwanda benefits from a little more roast, City+ to Full City, because my lightest City roast samples had a slight grainy note and astringency in the finish.

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Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza

$5.70	$10.83	$24.80	$47.31	$87.78

The washing station this lot originates at, Rwanda.

Country: Rwanda

Grade: AA

Region: Southwestern: Butare (Gkongoro, Nyarusiza)

Mark: Bufcafe Cooperative Washing Stations

Processing: Wet-Processed

Crop: January 2010 Arrival

Appearance: .2 d/300gr, 16-17 Screen

Varietal: Mostly Bourbon Cultivar

Intensity/Prime Attribute: Medium intensity / Restrained brightness, complexity, dense mouthfeel

Roast: City+ to Full City

Compare to: Graceful East African brightness and bittersweets. Clean and dynamic cup. This coffee is very balanced, and plays well to the cupping form, a "competition coffee." It might make the numbers seem high when considering the overall cup and the total score, hence the low cuppers correction.

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Archived Reviews

To view reviews for out of stock coffees, visit our Rwanda Coffee Archives.

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This page is authored by Thompson Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be copied or reproduced without permission