Uganda Kithuthu 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 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

This is a coffee you wouldn’t usually see in a specialty roaster’s list: Drugar is short for Dried Uganda Arabica. This is usually a home-dried coffee that normally sells on the internal market in Uganda because it’s not considered worthy of export. Unlike Ethiopia, the internal market in Uganda doesn’t pay particularly well for coffee, so producing exportable coffee creates a massive income difference for farmers. Our friends Dana, Shak, and Michael at The Coffee Gardens do amazing social work, and they saw an opportunity to raise incomes for farmers by collecting cherry, drying and sorting some of the Drugar with their partners at TCY. They blended it with some of their rejects, and elevating it to exportable quality while paying a premium. It was quite a delicious cup just as they sent it to us, but with the added advantage of our colour sorter to clean it up even further, this coffee becomes truly beautiful. We bought the entire lot of 37 sacks. This is a rare case where the old specialty coffee story of 'helping a farmer improve quality so they make more money' is actually true. This coffee now tastes like rum punch and cherry Kool-Aid: an inflation-beating juice bomb. The Coffee Gardens was established in 2017 with the goal of producing incredible specialty coffees in an ethical way, offering a transparent and direct link between coffee farmers and coffee consumers. The project was established for many purposes: to improve farmers’ income and livelihoods, create and provide rural employment, promote gender equality, increase transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain, promote and work on environmental protection in the area, and provide training in good agricultural practices. Elevation: 1400-2300 Metres Above Sea Level Varietal: SL14, SL28, Nyasaland Cup Score: 87 Price paid per kilo: £7 Process: Fully natural, home-dried by coffee-growing smallholders

Meaning ‘sleep’ in the indigenous Wayuunaiki language, Colombian 'Atunkaa' decaf lots are some of our favourite for sweet dreams and calm days. We loved the crisp Atunkaa Washed decaf we had earlier this year, and now we get to offer this juicy naturally-processed iteration, replete with sugary notes of Cherry Coke and vanilla. We think it's just the thing for winter's dark evenings. This decaf coffee is from Siruma, one of our key long-term partners in Colombia via our importer Falcon. Siruma was founded six years ago with the mission of partnering with underserved farming communities in Cauca, Caldas, and Tolima. The company's name comes from the Wayuunaiki language and means ‘Heaven and Skies’. Victoria and her Siruma team constantly inspire us by how hard they work to improve both their farmers' coffee and livelihoods, and Falcon are exemplary in how they work with Siruma to promote the stories of everyone involved. It's a win-win relationship that we love being a part of. Atunkaa Decaf showcases Siruma's commitment to transparency and fair prices for farmers. It is sourced from the Central Cauca Association for Peace (ACC) in Piendamó, Cauca. ACC was created by a local farmer who wanted to add value to Castillo coffee and provide stable incomes to help neighbours avoid illicit crops. Central to the cooperative's model is its wet-milling plant, which gives smallholders without their own processing infrastructure a place to deliver cherry and receive a fair price. Because the plant's natural processing capability adds significant value, the cooperative is able to pay growers well for their cherry. On arrival, cherries are classified to determine whether they are directed toward natural or fully washed processing, with the higher-quality cherries reserved for naturals. They then pass through a cleaning stage to remove solid particles, followed by optical sorting that separates under-ripe cherries — routed to the washed process — from the ripest fruit selected for naturals. The natural-process cherries undergo an aerobic stage of 24 to 36 hours before mechanical drying at 35 to 40 degrees Celsius until moisture reaches 10 to 11 percent. Each batch is kept separate and packed in GrainPro to preserve quality. The coffee is decaffeinated by Descafecol using a sustainable sugarcane-based process. By working directly with the mill and decaffeinator, Siruma ensures fair pricing and complete traceability back to the contributing farmers. Elevation: 1700-1900 Meters Above Sea Level Varietal: Castillo, Colombia, Caturra Cup score: 86 Price paid per kg: £11.60 Process: Natural, then Ethyl Acetate/sugarcane decaffeinated