'Misfits' Uganda Drugar Natural

We've been loving all the lush flavours coming out of Ugandan coffee this year, and this lot is no exception. It's a quintessential example of natural coffee from the Rwenzori region: sweet notes of guava, strawberry, and sorrel combine to create a juicy cup with a hint of pleasing tartness. We sourced this coffee with the help of Agri Evolve, who through their local buying centre and coffee station work hard to help Ugandan farmers and their communities thrive. Ibanda is a coffee-farming village at the foothills of Uganda’s Rwenzori mountains. This coffee has been sourced from a large number of smallholder farmers from the southern part of the Rwenzori region. There are over 2,700 farmers in the area who bring their ripe cherries to the coffee station for processing. For this batch, the coffee cherries were placed in water for 48 hrs before being moved to the drying tables to complete the natural drying process, and the cherries were turned by hand regularly to ensure even drying. The dried cherries were then hulled, cleaned, and sorted in the dry mill before being bagged and sent to London. If you enjoy comparing the taste of coffees from the same region, we highly recommend checking out our other Ugandan naturals. From boozy to fruity and floral, they represent the truly diverse range of flavours that Ugandan coffee has to offer. Elevation: 1400–2000 Metres Above Sea Level Varietal: SL14, SL28, and some older regional landrace varieties Cup Score: 87.5 Price paid per kilo: £8.95 Process: Natural

Here's another coffee from our partners Agri Evolve in Uganda, this time a gorgeous natural with notes of mango, nectarine, and osmanthus blossom. It really surprised us with its juiciness and florality! Of all the coffees we tried from Agri Evolve this was definitely the stand out. Mbata is a coffee-farming community at the foothills of Uganda’s Rwenzori mountains, and Agri Evolve established a buying centre here for the local farmers several years ago. We love all the social work Agri Evolve does, including teaching farmers how to process their coffees better to create more value, and the fact that they are a registered B-Corp. Farmers in Mbata typically have between 1 and 2 acres of land, and coffee is their main cash crop. To make this coffee, ripe, red coffee cherries were picked daily during the harvest season and taken to the buying centre. The cherries were weighed, assessed for quality, and the farmers were paid in cash. From here trucks carried the cherries to the Agri Evolve Coffee Station at Nyabirongo. On arrival at the Coffee Station, the ripe cherries were placed in tanks of water for 48 hours to ensure anaerobic fermentation. The cherries were then removed from the water and put on raised beds to continue the drying process as a natural coffee. This tasty lot was processed with the addition of carefully selected overripe cherries which were added to the drying table to further enhance fermentation and create a creamy, sweet, and complex cup profile. When fully dried, the coffee was hulled, graded, sorted, and cleaned and prepared for export to the UK. If you enjoy comparing the taste of two coffees from the same region, we highly recommend checking out Uganda Kithuthu, which we also purchased through Agri Evolve. It's also a natural, but with a sunnier, sweet-tart profile, and it's pretty fascinating to taste the two side-by-side. We're really excited to feature these new Ugandan coffees and help promote Agri Evolve's amazing work. Elevation: 1800-2000 Metres Above Sea Level Varietal: SL14 and SL28 and some older regional landrace varieties Cup Score: 88 Price paid per kilo: £8.95 Process: Extended fermentation natural

We've been blown away by the delicious flavours coming from Ugandan coffees this year and are excited to share as many as we can. This well-balanced and juicy natural is from Kithuthu, with plenty of sweet star fruit, melon, and lemon notes to create a lovely 'fruit salad' effect in the cup. We sourced this coffee with the help of Agri Evolve, who through their local buying centre and coffee station work hard to help Ugandan farmers and their communities thrive. Kithuthu is a community at the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains, with many farmers living and growing coffee well above this height. Agri Evolve established a buying centre here for the local farmers several years ago. We love all the social work Agri Evolve does, including teaching farmers how to process their coffees better while registering as a B-Corp. Farmers in Kithuthu typically have between one and two acres of land, and coffee is their main cash crop. To make this coffee, ripe cherries were picked daily during the harvest season and taken to the buying centre. The cherries were weighed, assessed for quality, and the farmers paid in cash. From here, trucks carried the cherries to the Agri Evolve Coffee Station at Nyabirongo. This batch has gone through an additional ‘extended fermentation’ process to further develop and enhance the quality of this coffee. The ripe cherries were placed in tanks of water for 48 hours for an anaerobic fermentation. The cherries were then removed from the water and put on raised beds to continue the drying process as a natural coffee. A special selection of overripe cherries were piled deeply on the drying tables to further enhance fermentation. When fully dried, the coffee was hulled, graded, sorted, and cleaned and prepared for export to the UK. Elevation: 1600-1800 Metres Above Sea Level Varietal: SL14, SL28, and some older regional landrace varieties Cup Score: 87 Price paid per kilo: £8.95 Process: Extended fermentation natural

This is the most 'standard' tasting coffee on our menu, but perhaps the one we're most excited about. We love a lot of things about Brazil as a coffee origin: It has a high minimum wage, a strong domestic consumption market to support producers, and we have more than a decade's worth of relationships and buying experience there. Brazil 'Futures' is now one of our core, year-round coffees that keeps a consistent flavor profile of melted chocolate and macadamia whilst being sourced from various smallholder farmers who can benefit from partnering with Skylark. You can read more about the mechanisms we're using below. It's a little nerdy, but very cool. We think you'll love it... It's the perfect 'coffee flavored coffee' with a big dose of impact. Elevation: 1000 Meters above Sea Level (average)Varietal: VariousCup score: 82Price paid per kg: £7.50Process: Fully natural, cherries are sorted, then dried on patios Read more about the entire deal down below from when we first launched 'Futures' in 2025: Replacing good with great We’re moving away from our most-purchased coffee, our go-to Brazil Santa Rosa that’s always been our best value for money. Why would we do that? Because we think we’ve found a way to get better values for our money. This week, we’re launching a new core Brazil that is more chocolatey, affordable in this market, and delivers a far greater impact for farmers and the environment. We’re calling this coffee Brazil Futures — it’s about financial security for the people who grow it. As a core ingredient in many of our blends, this coffee reaches a lot of people in the supply chain and among our coffee drinkers, too. Here’s how it works: Brazil Futures comes from small family farms, which are typically more ecologically sustainable than Brazil’s large coffee plantations. The growers are members of a small and relatively unknown association called Associação da Barra, and we’ve sourced the coffee through Minasul, a medium-sized cooperative that is very clever about using coffee “futures” contracts to empower producers, not just themselves. How to solve farmers staying poor while the market goes up You might have heard: the price for green coffee is the highest it’s ever been – almost 3 times the average price of the last 15 years. This is causing chaos in the coffee industry, and those futures contracts play a key role. What follows is a little technical, but complex problems require some explanation, so here we go: All coffee is bought and sold on the Futures or ‘C’ market at the stock exchange in New York. Historically, this has been used to make traders and big corporations rich while keeping coffee prices low and farmers poor. Since the price for coffee has recently tripled, however, some of the biggest coffee traders in the world are in trouble – essentially because papering over bad ‘futures’ bets and rapid growth speculation takes cash, and that’s in short supply with each sack of coffee costing 2-3x what it did 16 months ago. We’re seeing exporter/importers sell out to Saudi wealth funds and oil companies or file for bankruptcy protection, including the exporting partners we used to work with in Brazil. Meanwhile, small producers struggle the most in volatile markets, so this is a key moment to choose our partners carefully and protect the less advantaged. Unlocking market power Here at Skylark, we’re now big enough to buy full shipping containers of Brazilian coffee, which unlocks a new phase of work with trusted partners like Minasul to increase our impact beyond just what we pay for coffee. Instead of using the futures market to speculate for their own profit, Minasul allows farmers to convert their coffee from futures contracts into physical coffee (and vice versa) at a time that benefits them, much like stock traders do. This is highly unusual and means that smaller farmers have more control and can boost their income in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Minasul also sells most of their coffee within Brazil rather than exporting it. This means that their business is more stable and they have access to quick cash to pay farmers promptly – a huge deal if you’re a coffee grower. Both Minasul and Skylark are paying premiums to the farmers as well as donating some much-needed equipment and tech for the growers’ cooperative. We’ll be increasing these donations throughout the coming years using our pledge to put £1 per kilo sold into grower empowerment projects. We’re then importing the coffee through our friends at Falcon who understand the work we’re doing at Skylark and brilliantly support these kinds of arrangements. Environmental potential The final argument for Brazil Futures centres on the ecological advantage of small family farms, whether certified organic or not. One of the growers, Arcanjo Alexadre Alves, is carrying on a type of attentive farming begun by his grandfather in the 1980s. Another, Afonso Donizetti Silva, began with just 145 coffee trees, producing 4 bags of coffee (two for him, two for his wife). These are the kinds of smallholders we’d like to support while buying a large percentage of their total production. Don’t get us wrong – our longstanding Brazil Santa Rosa was an affordable coffee from a large-scale producer that pays workers well and offsets carbon emissions. That was good! But it seems more ‘Skylark’ to support farmers with less of their own security. That’s even better. Welcome to Brazil Futures.