unionroasted blog

In my last post about visiting farmers in Rwanda during the current season, I discussed how high market prices can bring difficulties to the farmers. In this post we’ll look at how prices can affect quality.

Quality is not an Accident

The second negative effect of high coffee market prices shows its hand in the overall quality of coffee reaching consumers.  In years of low market price, farmers  producing high quality specialty coffee know they have to maximise that quality to attract best prices. They achieve this by careful and selective picking which is more labour intensive, and careful post-harvest processing of the cherries.  This year, not only in Rwanda but as we have seen in many countries, farmers understandably take the view that they will be receiving more than last year without the extra effort – so why bother!  Again we have taken a great deal of time – including Steven visiting them earlier this year – to encourage them to work carefully and reinforcing to farmers that our agreement to buy, at a premium to market value, is linked to producing high scoring speciality grades.

If all of this market turbulence was not enough to cope with, the weather also added its own challenge.  Usually, the cherries ripen and are harvested over a period of around twelve weeks.  This year however, due to lots of rain and warm sunshine, the full crop came in over just six weeks and the Coffee Washing Stations, where the cherries are processed, were inundated by huge volumes of coffee cherries which need to be pulped really quickly. The beans must be separated from the pulp in a timely manner. If this is not done, fermentation in the bean can occur, or insects are attracted and damage the cherries, both of which can cause unpleasant taste effects in the finished coffee.  As we are in regular contact with producers that UNION buy from, we were aware of the problem and knew that there would be issues in the harvest quality so careful selection was needed more than ever.

Each individual lot has to be sampled

It’s this last matter that really drove me to spend a chunk of July in the cupping Lab in Kigali, working with Leatitia, a cupper I had helped to train some five years ago and who helped select our lots last year.  Together we cupped and scored hundreds of individual production lots from three Cooperatives and to get the coffee Union requires this year, we discounted just over 50% of the lots as not being up to our standard, and that was after Leatitia had pre-screened the lots to offer me a choice of those she considered the best.

To make the selections, a sample of green coffee is taken from each lot passing through the stations on any given day and labelled with the district and control reference number and is sent to the cupping lab in Kigali.

First the lots are sample roasted

300g of the coffee is prepared and roasted the day before we cup the lot; first we assess the roasted fragrance of the dry grounds and then pour the water, steep before evaluating the wet aroma, and then tasting the coffee brewed simply in a glass. We evaluate for a range of characteristics to produce a final score and description for that coffee that enables me to make a selection and construct the overall quantity, quality and flavour profile when the lots are put together.

In each cooperative there are districts that each have their own terroir and hence character.  My job was to select the best lots and bring them together (blend them) to achieve an overall standard for the cooperative that reflects the style of the district.  Maraba for example produces a rich full bodied and smooth coffee with an
elegant orange/citrus acidity to balance the cup; we offer this as our Single Estate coffee, Rwanda Maraba Bourbon.  COCAGI cooperative in Gashonga yields a coffee that is sweet, fuller bodied and has more red fruit flavour notes which we’ve also selected as a core component for our Revelation espresso.  Karaba Co-operative was new to us this year and being out in the cupping lab to taste tens of lots from the district was fascinating and wholly informative.  I’m looking forward to UNION being able to offer this coffee, which is distinct from the others having a lighter body with clean fresh apricot and white fruit, almost floral notes and a silky milk chocolate mouthfeel.

Occasionally during the cupping process, a lot comes up on the table that has a really outstanding flavour, with clarity and balance coupled with unique flavour notes and which also receives a high score.  In these cases, I have requested that these small lots are segregated all the way through and are delivered to us as our micro-lot selections.  We will release information on these as and when we get closer to them arriving in London and have checked and approved the arrival samples ensuring nothing untoward has happened during shipping.

Samples cooling before cupped

It’s only by getting out to the farms that we can know what has occurred during the harvest each year and I have no doubt that there may, sadly be a lot of very variable quality Rwanda coffee reaching the international market.  But it’s through our Union Direct Trade relationships and putting the miles
and work in, also personally a very enjoyable process that UNION Hand-Roasted Coffee will again be able to represent the very best of Rwanda’s speciality coffee
harvest for 2011-2012.

Working out the final scores

Burundi Road Trip June 2010

Since we first got involved in Rwanda coffee in 2003, we’ve often been asked about sourcing from its southern neighbour Burundi. After the 1994 regional crisis and civil wars, Burundi remained in a state of turmoil with agreements only signed between the last of the rebel groups and the transitional coalition government as late as 2009. Since 2005 however, with increasing political stability, and the support of the international community, fundamental changes have been made to the coffee sector to enable outside investment and remove state ownership and control of the processing and export facilities. It was against this backdrop of liberalisation (thus allowing Union to develop direct contact with growers), our increasing interest in the unique coffees of the Great Lakes region, and their retained heritage Bourbon varietal (same as Rwanda) that I went to find out the breadth and diversity that Burundi coffee has to offer.

On this trip I was travelling with 6 other curious roasters from the USA and Canada and had been invited to tour a number of the producer cooperatives and meet the principal figures in the Burundi coffee scene from the various sectors; government, private enterprise and cooperatives. Whilst Steven and I don’t often go along on group tours, such an organised week of visits and intensive cupping promised to make the most of my time as I was also due to travel on the following week to spend days cupping lots for our 2010 Rwanda Harvest shipments. When you are getting to know a country’s coffee it’s important to cup as many lots as possible from a variety of areas and producers. This way you build up a picture of who is producing good coffee, who might be able to produce VERY good coffee with a bit of partnership and support, and who is talking the talk but not walking!

Our tour began crossing over the border from Rwanda at Kanyaru Haut crossing, accompanied by plus Ben Lentz (director of the US AID funded BAP Burundi Agricultural Project), Anne Ottaway, representing Michigan State University’s programme and various heads of coffee sector taking a ride in a convoy of 4×4’s. My travelling companion during the following days was mostly Adrien Sibomana, CEO of InterCafé , Burundi’s representative organisation for growers and exporters. Adrien is a tall quiet and thoughtful man, keenly aware of the most pressing issues facing Burundi coffee growers and is moving to get a national dialogue going about how to resolve increasing production of quality, value added coffee with the highly compartmentalised approach to family land ownership which inevitably prevents farmers from benefitting from even minor economies of scale. Over this and many other topics that affect coffee production and community development, Adrien told me more about his background and how he came into public office. What he (or anyone else) didn’t tell me, and what I found out two days into the trip, was that I was riding around with a former prime minister, (1988 – 1993).

Over the four following days of cooperative (washing station) visits and cuppings, it was clear that Burundi’s coffee industry is very much in a state of transition, with a well organised government established infrastructure of washing stations and dry mills that were developed with the single rationale of producing quantity, but not necessarily the quality that might be capable of generating added value for the country’s growers or the breakthrough quality that Union look for. In 2009 however the first stages of liberalisation took place with 13 of the country’s 160 washing stations being taken into either public (cooperative) or private enterprises, and we now have the opportunity to work direct with producers and source coffee traceable coffees.

On the first day, we spent the day touring Kayanza Province, a district to the east of the High mountainous forest area and arrived first at Ruhororo washing station. After being welcomed by enthusiastic Burundi ritual drummers we had opportunity to look at the process for receiving cherries and the washing station operation. One immediately apparent difference between Rwanda and Burundi station practices is that when smallholders bring cherry in, before they put the coffee on the sorting tables to screen out any under ripe (partly green) cherries, they have to put their pick into a basket or net which is then dropped into a water tank and the cherries that float (indicating malformed beans inside, insect damaged beans or over-ripe cherries) are skimmed off. The individual farmers then sort for only remaining perfect red (under-ripes sink as well as ripes) on the dry tables before weighing in and taking a chit or getting paid for the amount of coffee delivered. Ruhororo was one of the first of the stations handed back from the state after a group of 20 farmers decided to group together to take on the station and work as a cooperative taking cherries from local growers. BAP has partnered with this group contributing joint venture funding to add waste water processing capabilities to the station and prevent downstream negative impact while also contributing agricultural and organisational capacity building initiatives. This type of collaborative support is vitally important to us at Union Hand Roasted as we recognise that we are not a development agency but depend very closely on these aspects also being supported as well as our commercial support. Local partners can be highly effective and critical in maintaining what often seem like baby-step advances over the years of involvement.

Our second station visit seemed to be more like a visit to Mumbai train station with hundreds of people if not a thousand or so milling around the cooperative offices and warehouse. Even by African standards of hospitality and greeting this seemed to be an inordinate number of people so it was with relief that we found out that the farmers had turned up for the annual fertiliser handout. At Butegana, also in Kayanza, the station had been taken over in the first wave of liberalisation by a commercial operation known as Webcor Group, a private company active in commodity production in a number of countries around the world. With big resources, the company has made a significant commitment to Burundi coffee taking 13 stations in the first government privatisations and putting in human and financial resources to develop quality initiatives at both station and smallholder level. The principal difference here is that the processing facility is privately owned and as such profits remain within the corporation as opposed to being shared out amongst the community. In reality, coffee producing countries need both public and private producers as the latter can often employ capital to develop resources in an organised manner and if the goal remains that of creating added value coffee that the farmers can really see an improvement in earnings per kilo grown or labour hour employed then it should be seen as a benefit and not just the corporate arm of big business. As this is the first year of this relationship we’ll continue to watch and see how things progress. From the visit it was immediately apparent however that the station’s capacity was huge (500-1500MT) and that even with a central elevation of 1650MASL much work will need to be undertaken to really understand the areas from which their coffee comes, the daily lot sizes that comprise the stations operational capacity and how these can remain segregated to protect and retain the no doubt small parcel sizes where real quality coffee can be found and retained.

After a short lunch we made the final visit of the day to a station at Buziraguhindwa (CPC), a much smaller station (capacity 300-500MT) also private but this time owned and operated by a local private organisation. With an exciting altitude location of 1996MASL this station is well located in the higher reaches of Kyanza’s Muruta district and should be capable of producing some good coffee lots although sadly we didn’t see any samples from here on the cupping tables.

Looking at Burundi coffee there are unsurprisingly many similarities in the methods of operation when compared to Rwanda – after all both countries share so many aspects of terrain, population dispersal and density and of course the presence of old Bourbon coffee varietals. Just because of this however, one should not assume that the coffee itself will be the same as Rwanda’s. Now that the quality of Rwanda coffee has been allowed to shine through better agronomy and processing, real regional differences are becoming apparent characterising coffees that may be full bodied with deep brown sugar sweetness to those fleeting cups with floral, citrus and soft honeyed tones. I fully expect that with such a diversity of microclimates and a soil character that is similar but with enough differences to mark it out from other regions, Burundi coffee could provide us with yet more nuances of the region.

On day 2 of the trip, our cupping was due to take place at a regional cupping lab in Ngozi and here for the first time the roaster anoraks came out! When preparing cupping lots, we routinely use very small batch roasting machines known unsurprisingly as sample roasters. These bits of kit are, like any specialist equipment inordinately expensive and are manufactured in different sizes (number of barrels that can simultaneously roast). At Union we have a two barrel machine that covers the majority of our needs, but out here in Ngozi, the full evidence of government commitment (spending) became apparent. It seemed as though whichever door or hallway we looked in, there was yet another SIX Barrel roaster – in brand new pristine condition. In one lab we noted 5, six barrel machines – and by the end of the week our count had climbed up to a total of fifty something barrels!!!! I hope that these machines find their way out into the regions and are well used, its just that when one sees things like this – I hope that the machines do get implemented and don’t just disappear into the system!

Over the following two days we visited another four stations, both private and cooperatively owned and witnessed similar operations trying to tease out the differences between people and their approach to the coffee, subtle things that give you a feel for the people’s relationship to what they produce and how the community is established – their aspirations and willingness to partner with external organisations to improve quality and of course their return. No matter how much people get under your skin, its important as a buyer to remain focussed on the coffee. I’ve thought back over the years about how many people we’ve met each with great stories and how we’ve come away with a desire or a hope that their coffee meets our own requirements but the acid test is of course the cupping room and blind tasting. This trip promised to be a crash course in Burundi coffee and after day 4 we had hit over 240 sample lots and to keep the schedule on track had to resort to some pretty nifty speed cupping – yeah it’s the same as dating just that your partner doesn’t slap you in the face when you say something inappropriate!

On the final day of the trip, we had a long morning cupping session at Arfic – the Burundi National Coffee Regulation Authority with the US Ambassador in attendance and who also participated in the cupping under tutelage of Wendy DeJong, current chair of the US Roasters Guild. The Ambassador had only recently taken up the posting but it was encouraging to see how much time she gave us and the Burundian teams in seeking to understand the opportunity for both sides in this partnering for quality. I know our own government does do some good work in supporting developing countries –mainly in areas of governance and society, but as a coffee guy its frustrating not to be able to hook up with our own nationals in developing these sources of great coffee…..come on DFID?

Overall I have to say that this has been a great trip and I do feel much more aware of the range of possibilities in Burundi coffee. From my cupping notes I have already got my eye on some lots we’d like to try out and get to know Burundi a little better this year. Over the coming months we are going to look at some of the communities where we can, as with Rwanda, form a close relationship and work together to develop sustainable direct trading that yields more exciting coffee from the Great Lakes of Africa.

Last month we completed a short internship here in London, with Zacharie from Café de Maraba, Rwanda.

Our relationship with the Rwanda farmers at Maraba & Gashonga, is through Direct Trade in its truest sense and we’re assisted by Rwashoscco (Rwanda Small Holder Specialty Coffee Company) which exports and markets the superb specialty Rwanda coffee grown by the 11 Co-operatives on behalf of the farmers.

Rwashoscco is owned by the Co-operatives and is a for-profit business. It also operates “Cafe de Maraba”, a small coffee roasting company, now in Kigali but previously in Butare, nearby Maraba.

Cafe de Maraba sells to the local restaurants, hotels and grocery in Rwanda. It is the best known coffee in Rwanda, and when I’m in Rwanda and ask a waiter in a restaurant “what coffee am I drinking?” they always tell me “Café de Maraba”. But ask to see the package, and it can be another story. Sometimes its one of the competitors, and you can tell because they don’t taste as good.  So Zacharie, the Manager of Café de Maraba, was with us in London to pick up some ideas on how he can grow and develop Café de Maraba and market it successfully.

The coffee which Café de Maraba roasts and sells creates additional revenue stream for the co-operatives.  So, the strategy is for the farmers to participate in a business which provides value added “roasted coffee” as well as earn income from their crops through selling to the co-operative.

The team at Café de Maraba is very small; they are very good and committed to what they do, but the barriers which they face – high taxes, low internal coffee consumption, constant power failures and delivery issues make managing a business incredibly difficult.  Despite the challenges, they are selling roasted coffee in a market which is leading the continent in business growth. With the interest in tourism, there are many new hotels, and restaurants are busy and new openings too.

Zacharie had the opportunity to observe how we navigate Union on a daily basis. We visited clients (thank you to Giraffe, Canteen, Taylor Street Baristas and Royal Festival Hall).  He has to wear many hats; managing the Roasting Facility, Sales & Marketing, Administration, Distribution. We know exactly how that feels when you only have a couple or three people in the team so hopefully he picked up a few tips.  I think the more people Rwashoscco is able to have with the passion and enthusiasm that Zacharie expressed, the greater the chances are for them to be successful as a company and of course that will bring success for the individuals too.
So if you are fortunate enough to visit Rwanda, perhaps drinking coffee in a restaurant, check that it’s Café de Maraba, & pick up a pack at Kigali Airport before you leave.

Jeremy Torz, Steven Macatonia. Union Hand-Roasted Coffee, UK.

The story of Rwanda’s coffee

Locked away at the heart of East Africa, Rwanda is a tiny country about the size of Wales with a rural, subsistence-agricultural economy. With a population of 9.3 million people, land is divided into small family plots with no or very little large-scale commercial agriculture. In recent years, the country’s coffee sector has undergone a remarkable transformation unlike any other coffee producer. It has seen the establishment of a now-vibrant grower and export community dedicated to working with the speciality sector.

Although Rwanda had been producing commercial coffee since the early 1900’s, the majority production was purchased by the state-owned RWANDEX and exported as Rwanda Ordinaire. This product was usually below C market due to the general perceived lack of fine cup quality and consistency. This situation was exacerbated after the 1994 civil war, when the entire country’s social and economic infrastructure broke down, displacing the population and condemning even greater numbers of people to poverty and subsistence. Our own journey through this country, its coffee and in reality its reformation to producer of premium speciality really began just a few years later. In 2001, a fledgling development programme brought us together with the first newly constituted Co-operative, Abahuzamugambi Ba Kawa to form a relationship that has lasted to this day.

The Co-operative started life as an association of small farmers in 1999 in the Maraba district (now called Huye). It’s purpose was to present a single voice to RWANDEX and sell coffee at a collectively agreed price in excess of the low prices often paid by rural collectors. Around this time, the USAID funded development programme, Project to Enhance Agriculture through Linkages (PEARL) was also active in this area. PEARL—directed by Dr Tim Schilling—was putting a remit into action to produce smallholder, fully-washed coffee optimised for quality, not volume. With this support from USAID as well as OCIRCafé (the coffee department of the government industrial development agency), a new model was created for coffee farming and specifically the centralised post-harvest processing into exportable beans under an economically sustainable model.

To bring the project to life, Abahuzamugambi Ba Kawa (based near the small town of Butare and close to the National University of Rwanda campus) was selected for the pilot project which could be developed as a model cooperative to mentor other communities. Agronomy Extension workers focused on creating, training and developing farmers’ understanding of better crop care to improve quality. In 2001, the critical turning point in developing cup quality was the construction of the first coffee washing station (CWS) in recent years.

Previously, all coffee cherries were processed to parchment by hand —pounding with stones, using home made wooden pulpers in front of the home or through the use of manual pulpers provided by OCIR Café located around the countryside.

Because washing water had to be collected from streams up to an hour or more walk away, washing and cleaning was a haphazard activity. The crop further suffered from an inherent regional potato taste defect: a starchy, astringent and pungent flavour that seemed to appear randomly throughout the crop.

The centralised CWS thus took the task of processing the cherries out of the hands of the individual farmers, who previously sold parchment coffee at low prices to intermediaries. Instead, farmers would now sell perfect, ripe cherries to the CWS at a premium with the lesser quality crop sold through traditional commodity channel.

Quality was further increased as the project agronomists trained workers to understand the post-harvest production techniques. Through this training and implementation of controlled separation and grading, a notably and dramatic reduction in potato taste became apparent.

During the time the first CWS was constructed, we become aware of the PEARL Project in Rwanda. We also heard that the country had retained cultivation of the traditional Red Bourbon varietal, and that it might be interesting to look at the coffee from this previously non-speciality producer. After making contact with Dr Schilling we received carefully-graded and prepared samples from smallholder households. Our cupping determined that although variable, there was a flavour profile that was exciting and distinct from the other East African origins in the better lots. The coffee was outstandingly sweet, with an underlying milk chocolate component, and vibrant, but controlled citric acidity, possibly softer and more rounded than other coffees of the region.

In 2002 we visited Abahuzamugambi Ba Kawa to meet the leaders to understand how we could work to support their efforts. We began to receive crop samples direct from the new CWS and cupped daily lots to select grades achieving speciality status. A contract was agreed for the resulting green coffee from the first managed production of Fully Washed Rwanda Arabica, the world’s first to market as Rwanda Bourbon single origin, under it’s new, speciality philosophy.

Between 2002-2004, we began to change the focus from volume production to a strategy of developing capacity to produce quality coffee. We launched a marketing programme to attract buyers to this fledgling specialty origin. Those bold enough to take up the challenge worked closely with their chosen washing stations to select lots of a consistently high standard. If Rwanda coffee exports were to be a commercial success, this lot selection needed to be undertaken in-country. In November 2003, Coffee Corps (USA) sent the first cupping trainers to construct and deliver a formal Cupper Training Programme to develop this expertise. Previously, all technical training had been solely concerned with raising “overall quality”; but a successful future for Rwanda coffee depended upon its being able to exploit its regional microclimates.

Over the following 3 years, significant progress was made in coffee quality and technical skills. With over 100 CWS in operation, the strategy was to bring the Cup of Excellence to Rwanda and to use this spotlight to facilitate additional buyer relationships.

Before this could be agreed, a pre-cursor competition—the 2007 Golden Cup—facilitated by the SPREAD programme and Rwandan coffee industry, was held to trial the logistics of selecting traceable lots and working to an international protocol. Coffee farmers worked to produce exemplary coffees for this internal competition. 24 diverse and exceptional coffees were selected to represent Rwanda’s top coffee production zones.

The head judge for CoE Rwanda, Paul Songer of Songer Associates, said: “The primary idea of the Golden Cup (and CoE) was not to sell coffee but to develop the market—and the way to do this is through a more thorough evaluation of what the flavours are in a particular coffee (and where they are coming from) then extend this idea further to determine what conditions were responsible for creating these unique flavours.”

Access to the competition samples provided Paul Songer and Tim Schilling with a research opportunity to take an original approach asking two key questions:

1. Do these exemplary coffees from different regions within Rwanda offer a sufficiently diverse spectrum of flavours to offer points of difference?
2. Can these flavours be correlated to particular geographic variables and be further used to direct farmer activities?

The coffee selected from Golden Cup and CoE were used as the analytical samples in an extensive sensory analysis conducted by Songer Associates and volunteers from CoE jury panels. Samples from each of 8 different geographical regions were repeatedly cupped for consistently identifiable flavour characteristics. If these were not present in multiple samples from the region, the attribute was discounted. Through this protocol a list of attributes and identifiers was compiled that would ultimately represent three consistent “appellations”.

With the SPREAD Project’s links to the National University of Rwanda, a collaboration was established with research by Dr. Michele Schilling (Director of Geographic Information Systems Research Centre) on soil types and geographical profiling to create a link between appellation territory and the observed flavour attributes.

Rwanda in the Cup

Since the first Fully Washed coffees were developed in Rwanda, there has been consensus amongst specialty buyers that there is indeed a distinct flavour profile present within Rwanda coffee. This has most often been noted as the presence of soft citrus, slightly floral, with pleasant milk chocolate mid palette notes. It’s balanced and sweet, making it extremely versatile for filter (drip) and espresso with the appropriate roast.

Paul Songer further notes one distinctive finding, that there were often unique “mouth-feel” aspects to Rwanda coffee which some described as “soft” or “silky”. This is important to note as an especially original attribute, when compared to the other fine quality East African coffees.

Varietals

Much of this taste profile may be attributed to the Red Bourbon varietal which exclusively dominated cultivation until 1999 with the first releases of Catuai and Caturra varietal by OCIR Café and ISAR (Institute for Science in Agricultural Research). Of the two, Caturra was found to be more popular but is estimated to be less than 2% of Rwanda production. Unverified anecdotal evidence is that the Rwanda Caturra originated from Kenya, with similar characteristics to a population derived from a Jamaica Blue Mountain varietal that produces a Bourbon-like plant type.

It is believed that some Bourbon derivatives such as Jackson from the 1940’s or 50’s may have been present but these have low productivity and are very rust susceptible. They have since been replaced over time with newer Bourbon strains, with higher productivity and improved disease resistance. According to Tim Schilling, “before the PEARL project, Rwanda producers were unaware of the specialness and desire of roasters to seek the Bourbon varietal they were producing, it was just coffee. We have been able to put Bourbon’s name on a pedestal and relate it to Rwanda, it’s a very positive thing for the country to hold onto”.

Between 2003-2005, Rwanda started to release Pop & Harrar as two new varieties with seeds supplied through OCIR Café. It is up to the farmer to select which variety they choose to grow, and are not currently selecting specific varieties according to region. The cupping analysis that follows was performed to identify attributes by region and not varietal.

Exploring Appellation

The analytical cupping work is refining the flavour map of Rwanda coffee and has identified candidate samples that displayed consistent and unique flavour profiles for appellation designation; Northern Region, Central Kivu and North Huye Region.

The North region sample was the winner of the Golden Cup Competition and was one of the most complex samples analysed, with 33 flavour attributes found. Beside aromatics that included nuts, spices, fruits and flowers, the sweetness and phosphoric acid components were amongst the highest intensities of any in the set of samples. It also had several descriptors applied to the mouthfeel and the cleanest, sweetest and longest finishes of the set of samples.

The Central Kivu sample was also noted for its floral and fruit characteristics, including lime and a small amount of violet fragrance. The mouthfeel of the sample produced several descriptors, indicating that it was an important aspect of the sample. The finish was clean, fruit-like and of medium length.

North Huye samples have some unique flavour and aromatic qualities, most notably including black fruit (blackcurrant fragrance and flavour, blackberry flavour, black cherry flavour) a unique mouthfeel described as “mouth-coating” and “syrupy”, and a medium long sweet finish.

At this current stage of work, the other regions studied did not provide the panellists with a strong consensus of around 5 or 6 attributes, usually required to define a coffee’s character.

“With Rwanda we’ve been hard pushed to keep it to that level, usually its 12 or so”, commented Paul Songer. The attributes were not sufficiently consistent or unique in their cup profiles when compared region to region to apply appellation designation.

North Region cup profile was characterized by floral aromatics, heavy black fruit (blackcurrant, prunes) and phosphoric acid.

Central Kivu cup profile demonstrated more red fruit (red apple, cherry) and dominated by malic acid (apple-type acidity). The coffees also consistently showed attributes of lemon/lime flavour and apricot.

North Huye Region has floral aromatics, with flavour attributes of red cherry, with less heavy black fruit notes, black cherry, blackcurrant and citric notes of grapefruit and orange.

Conclusion

Rwanda’s coffee industry has made a spectacular journey since 2001 possibly more than any other producing country in developing and understanding what added-value (speciality) buyers are seeking.

The project is at the early stages of developing an appellation designation which is the capacity to reproduce defined flavour profiles, unique to a region, with reasonable consistency. Once this has been achieved the next stage will be to uphold and safeguard the standards of the appellation.

To achieve this requires good process control (picking, fermentation, drying, and milling) provided by good technical assistance and extension services to farmers. Variation at this level can amount to such capriciousness that could overwhelm regional differences in many cases. So the first stage has to be solid post-harvest control and then with appellation development achieving a basic level of consistency and it is encouraging to note that the level of achievement to date is significant with a professional national cuppers employed by most CWS and co-operatives.

Out of this work, the impact will be in the development, marketing and eventually consumer awareness of regional flavour characteristics – leading to the creation and protection of geographic appellations. This can make a huge difference in the economic development of a coffee producing country as well as bring more excitement and curiosity to the marketplace.

Acknowledgements

With grateful thanks to Paul V. Songer (Songer Associates Inc, Boulder Colorado. USA.) and Dr Timothy Schilling, Director for Enterprise Development and Partnerships, The Borlaug Institute, Texas, USA, for interviews and published materials.