Green Coffee Offerings : Africa : Zambia

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Upcoming Crop Comments

Zambia has been tough to find, and when we have it I feel lucky. Our policy is simple: the cup has to be good or we won't stock it. There are wholesale roasters that are compelled to offer a coffee from every origin. If the cup is no good, why in the world would you do that? Frankly though, with amazing Kenyas readily available, a Zambia is up against some tough competition.

From the country formerly known as upper Rhodesia in a country now named for the Zambezi River, Zambian coffees range from Kenya-like brightness to subtle, balanced coffee with complexity, body and nuanced flavors... Zambia has variable quality: it has the potential to be outstanding (which is why we offer particular lots when we find an excellent coffee), and it can be very off-tasting and defective (which is why sometimes we are out of stock on Zambian coffee for long stretches). Coffee is grown in the Northern district of the Muchinga Mountains (regions of Nakonde, Kasama and Isoka) and in the vicinity of the capital city of Lusaka. Coffee was introduced in the 1950's with cultivar seedstock from Tanzania and Kenya.

The past few crop produced some real duds ...do not expect that every coffee with an exotic East African name will be good! In fact, I think the logistics of shipping these coffees can result in some of the loss of flavor, or in the case of Tanzanian, baggy flavors from being stored in shipping containers in port cities for too long! If it is good coffee, it has to be handled properly and shipped quickly, and when I cup them its very easy to weed out the ones that haven't. Anyway, when we have a Zambian in stock you can bet it is good!

The 2000 crop ranged from unremarkable estate coffees to very poor quality generic stocklots of peaberry and flatbean. These were widely available, and I thought they were all very poor in the cup. It is sad to know that these low quality lots are ruining a good origins reputation, and that some "specialty" roaster somewhere is buying this stuff and selling it as "good" coffee. The 2001 crop was a mixed bag, but we have found an excellent coffee from the Isanya Estate -very potent and perhaps not for every palate due to distinct wild notes in the cup. In 2003 we thought the Lupili was quite nice, but the following year it was flat as cardboard. In 2006, it is again a fine cup, with that balanced cup character we appreciated in the past. Even from the exact same farm, you can expect these variations from crop to crop, year to year.