Variety: Bourbon
Process: WashedDrying: Dried on Raised Beds; Shaded then under Sun
Producer: 2000 smallholder farmers organized in the Turihamwe Turashobora producer group
Region: Ngozi province
Country: Burundi
Elevation: 1750 MASLNotes: Chrysanthemum, Apricot, Black Currant
This is our second coffee from JNP, a women-founded and -led exporter in Burundi whose goal has been to empower women producers, improve their financial literacy, education for them and their children, and invest in clean water solutions. They provide all their producers with a Dushime ("thankful" in Kirundi) bonus second payment based on their coffee quality, which allows women to pay for their children's education, invest in the coffee farms, and save money for their families for the first time.
This producer group calls themselves Turihamwe Turashobora in Kirundi, which translates to “Together We Can!’’ This farmer-and-women-led-organization pooled the premiums earned through IWCA and JNP’s “Dushime” payment program and built their own wet mill in 2018 to maintain quality and better capture and represent the value of the coffee grown in their community.
The wet mill and quality team is entirely women-led and works closely with JNP’s trained Q Graders on best quality practices, lot curation, and building more efficient water treatment system for the processing station.
In the fully washed processing, cherry is floated for density and visible defects prior to mechanical depulping and demucilaginating. Thanks to the mechanical mucilage removal, fermentation is quick, lasting only overnight, after which the wet parchment is sorted by density under water in concrete tanks, and then soaked again once complete. Drying takes place at first under shade, and then in the open air with the parchment piled into pyramids, which are flattened and re-shaped each day as a form of incremental air exposure to slowly and evenly dry the coffee and lock in the final moisture. The resulting profile is exceedingly clean, bright and delicate.