Green Coffee Offerings : Africa : Rwanda |
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View Our Current Rwandan Coffees |
Upcoming Crop CommentsWe have one Rwanda in stock - the Rwanda Gkongoro Nyarusiza which is a good example of what Rwandan coffee can be. There is another Rwandan CoE competition this year in late August - and I will go. This time I think I will skip the genocide museum...... |
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About Rwandan Coffee
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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.
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:
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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.
Musasa is a town in the Gakenke district of northern Rwanda. The mill that processes the coffee is called Dukunde Kawa Musasa. The cooperative has over 2000 members, but when you realize that in Rwanda each farmer has less than 200 trees (they don't even talk in terms of hecatres or acres), this is not huge. Dukunde Kawa did well in the Cup of Excellence, and hopefully will have lots entered in the revived 2010 CoE competition later this year. The mill is at 2000 meters, with coffee grown at 1500-2000 meters at most. This means fairly cool fermentation temperatures when performing the wet process on the coffee, and long fermentation times. This, along with the careful cherry sorting before and after picking from the tree, and the Bourbon cultivar, greatly influences the Rwanda flavor profile. It\'s a coffee that has great classic character, sharing some aspects with Bourbon type coffees from Central America. The bean is dense; the flavors exist in a compact range, classic bittersweet balance, and a joy to roast. This was a very late lot with Fair Trade certificate, offered by the Rwanda Coffee Authority, OCIR, but arrived in great condition. We repackaged it in Grainpro to ensure freshness as well with this nice lot.
The cup is classic Rwanda. Dry fragrance ranges from floral and sweet (violets) to a more bittersweet chocolate from light to darker roast levels. I was really impressed with the sweet accents at the lighter ranges, and the wet aroma is very candy-like, saltwater taffy, caramel and vanilla, at City+ roast level. The cup follows suit; very sweet, caramelized sugars, cherry hard-candy notes, violet floral notes at the lightest roasts as well as tangerine/mandarin citrus. It's a cup that works well all along the roast spectrum, but I was so amazed by the lightest roast level (with 3 days rest after roasting, by the way) I must recommend keeping it as light as you can. The medium body has a silky mouthfeel, very refined and elegant overall.
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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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Archived Reviews
To view reviews for out of stock coffees, visit our Rwanda Coffee Archives.
2005-2006 | 2004 -2003 | 2001-2002 | Pre-2000 Tom's Sample Cupping Log | Moisture Content Readings This page is authored
by Thompson Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be
copied or reproduced without permission
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