and that's how Intelligentsia is describing our coffee:
Kivubelt Rwanda CoE #3 Special Selection
December 2018
Written by : J Mlodzinski Green Coffee Logistics / Green Coffee Buyer
Every year we look forward to the arrival of coffees from Rwanda, but perhaps never more than this year: our first Rwanda offering this season won third place at the 2018 Rwanda Cup of Excellence. In some regards, we are breaking new ground with this release: it is the highest-ranking CoE lot we have ever purchased from Rwanda, and our first-ever Special Selection from the country. But in other regards, this coffee feels very familiar to us.
This extraordinary lot was grown by members of the People’s Farm collective and processed at the Murundo coffee washing station (CWS) in Rwanda’s Western Province. Murundo is owned and operated by Kivubelt Coffee, a company founded by our friend and Direct Trade partner Furaha Umwizeye. If you recognize these names, it may be because they were the source of one of our most exciting inaugural releases last year, Rwanda Imena.
When Furaha created Kivubelt in 2011, the vision was one of vertical integration, and the operations soon included more than 200 hectares of coffee on three separate farms. When those farms produced their first crop in 2014, Kivubelt rented the Murundo CWS for the first few seasons to process its cherry. Two years later, Kivubelt purchased Murundo, upgrading the mill’s fermentation tanks and raised drying beds while reducing water usage to produce cleaner, higher-quality coffee. Kivubelt also began working with the communities around the CWS in Mahembe, delivering technical assistance on coffee quality and agronomy and supporting local education and health care initiatives. More than 500 families participate in the People’s Farm collective, delivering their cherry to the Murundo CWS every year and earning additional premiums they did not earn before. This CoE lot represents the best of People’s Farm and work of 41 of those families during several different days of the 2018 harvest.
Kivubelt and its People’s Farm neighbors are rising stars in Rwanda. This Cup of Excellence lot reinforces their position as one of the brightest lights in the country’s coffee firmament.
We hope you have a chance to enjoy our Rwanda Kivubelt CoE #3 Special Selection, but you will have to act fast — it is an extremely small lot and an extremely elegant coffee, which means it will not be around for long.