tastes like rosé, pomegranate, cherry and Hawaiian Punch.
Region: Nyamasheke
Washing Station: Gitwe
Farm: Multiple smallholders
Altitude: 1800-2000
Varieties: Bourbon
Process: Washed
Gitwe, down in Rwanda's Nyamasheke District, is one of the newer washing stations on the scene. It's perched up at about 1800 meters above sea level. The coffee farms of around 800 outgrowers, who drop off their coffee at Gitwe, sprawl between 1800 and 2000 meters. They go fully washed/wet on their coffee, which means they get rid of that sticky fruit layer (mucilage) by letting the beans ferment in tanks for a while.
This batch is all about the peaberries – those cute little almost-perfectly-round ones. Peaberries happen when a coffee cherry's got only one seed that decides to sprout, leaving you with a single bean that's all round and smooth, rather than the usual flat-on-one-side deal. Now, every coffee bush throws out a few peaberries, making up around 3% of the whole haul.
Very few coffee-producing countries have received the kind of focused aid that Rwanda has seen since the end of the genocide in 1994. The Rwandese coffee industry was the focus of a series of collaborative development projects designed to rebuild the agricultural sector, mainly coffee & cassava, after the devastation of genocide & civil war. By building washing stations, forming co-ops, and training agronomists, cuppers and quality control personnel, the programs helped to elevate Rwandese coffee to new heights, giving farmers access to specialty coffee markets and prices.
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