This is a great example of the amazing coffees that come out of Africa! We take this one to the darker side of medium to bring out the rustic chocolate notes accompanied by baking spices and a caramelly sweetness. This coffee is incredibly smooth and creamy with almost no acidity.
This lot comes from the Katanda Coffee Washing Station, one of seven stations operated by Virunga Coffee Company in the Kivu provinces of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Virunga was set up by Schluter, now Olam, in 2012, with a simple idea behind it: build specialty-grade processing capacity close to the farms, and push real premiums back to the thousands of smallholders who deliver cherry to it. There is no single estate behind this coffee. It is the pooled work of a lot of very small farms, and Katanda is where that cherry gets sorted, floated and turned into something exportable.
Katanda village sits in the Isale region of North Kivu, in Lubero territory, north of Lake Kivu and right on the edge of Virunga National Park, with the Ugandan border just to the east. Coffee grows here between 1,500 and 1,800 masl on deep volcanic soil, with plentiful rainfall and enough elevation to keep cherry maturing slowly. Growing conditions have never been the problem in this corner of the Congo. Infrastructure has: rough roads, no processing nearby, and almost no access to buyers who pay for quality. Virunga has worked that side directly, with hands-on farmer education and investment in local roads and bridges, seven full-time field agronomists working in the region, and more than 400,000 seedlings distributed to smallholders in Isale. Over 2,300 farmers have now been trained in good agricultural practices and hold organic certification.
The trees are Bourbon, and the lot is certified organic and Rainforest Alliance. Processing is fully washed. Ripe cherry is delivered to the station, sorted and floated so only dense, ripe fruit moves forward, then pulped, washed and dried in the sun on raised African beds. Dried parchment is rested in a cool, dry store for a month or two before it goes to dry milling for hulling, grading and sorting.
