Flavor Profile

Rich dark chocolate anchors every sip, with a distinctive Kahlúa-like depth that lingers on the finish. Beneath the surface, golden raisins and slow-cooked stone fruit — think sun-ripened peach and plum — add layers of warmth and complexity. A gentle, fruit-forward acidity keeps things lively, while a soft brown sugar sweetness rounds it all out into something deeply satisfying.

Details

The Gahahe Washing Station has been a cornerstone of Kayanza’s coffee community since 1989. The 1,740 farmers who deliver here each tend roughly 240 trees across about a tenth of a hectare — small plots by any measure, but ones that also sustain a rich variety of subsistence crops: bananas, beans, yams, taro, and cassava.

Because of the modest scale of individual farms, washing stations like Gahahe are essential to Burundi’s coffee economy. Without the space or resources to handle wet- or dry-milling on their own, most growers bring their freshly harvested cherries to a facility that handles sorting, blending, and post-harvest processing of day lots to create distinct, traceable offerings.

This is our third offering from Burundi, with two more lots arriving later this year. Every time we sample from this country, it delivers — and this microlot is no exception.

The Country

Burundi is a small, landlocked country — roughly the size of Maryland — nestled between Rwanda, the DRC, and Tanzania in the heart of the Great Rift Valley. The country produces only around 160,000 bags of coffee annually, a fraction of Ethiopia’s 3.5 million. But what Burundi lacks in volume, it more than makes up for in quality — and this microlot is a perfect example of that.