The story
Burundi is a small, landlocked country in East Africa, and it is often mentioned in the same breath as its northern neighbour, Rwanda. The green-coffee trader Sucafina says Belgian colonists brought Arabica trees to Burundi in the early 1930s. Under Belgian rule, farmers were required to grow coffee, and Cafe Imports notes they were paid very little for it.
After independence in 1962, the new government put money into coffee, with help from the World Bank, building washing stations and planting trees. Sucafina says production rose quickly from then until the early 1990s. A civil war from 1993 to 2005 changed that: many people were forced off their land, and many coffee trees were neglected or destroyed. Cafe Imports describes the decades after independence as a roller coaster, with long periods when farmers lost interest in coffee and quality fell.
Since about 2005, both the government and private companies have invested again, with more attention on higher-quality coffee. Cafe Imports links part of this to Rwanda's example of rebuilding through coffee. Today a mix of state-run and private companies runs the sector.
Almost all of the coffee comes from smallholders. Sucafina counts about 600,000 of them and says close to 5 million people depend on their income, in a country of a little under 11 million. Cafe Imports says the average farmer has less than a hectare. Getting coffee out is hard and expensive: it travels long distances by road to ports in other countries before it reaches a ship.
Burundi is a small producer. Sucafina puts average output at about 225,000 bags of 60 kg a year, while Cafe Imports gives exports of about 160,000 bags. The main growing areas are in the north. Sucafina names Kayanza and Ngozi as key provinces, and Cafe Imports lists Gitega, Karuzi, Kayanza, Kirundo, Muyinga and Ngozi.
How it's processed
A coffee bean is the seed inside a small fruit called a cherry. Because farms are so small, Burundian farmers do not usually process their own coffee. They bring their cherries to a central washing station, where the coffee of many farmers is processed together. State-owned station companies are called SOGESTALs; private companies run stations too. As a result, Burundian coffee is usually sold under the name of the washing station rather than a single farm. Cafe Imports says Kayanza alone has 21 stations, including Gackowe, Butezi, Gatare and Kiryama, and Sucafina sources from stations such as Kibingo and Nemba.
Most of the coffee is washed, and Cafe Imports says some is natural, dried with the whole fruit still on. The washed method it describes is similar to Kenya's. After the skin and fruit are removed, the beans ferment dry for about 12 hours, then soak in mountain water for 12 to 14 hours. They are floated to sort them by density, soaked again for 12 to 18 hours, and then dried in their papery parchment skin on raised beds.
The care taken at each step depends on the station's management, and that is a large part of why quality varies from one station to the next. Station managers also train farmers and help them get tools and supplies.
Harvest runs from about March to July, according to both importers, and Cafe Imports says the coffee usually reaches buyers from October to December.
What it tastes like
Burundian coffee is often described as sweet, clean and floral. Sucafina uses those words for the country as a whole. Cafe Imports describes its favourite lots as tasting like fig jam and flowers, with sparkling citrus and a structured acidity.
There is one known problem. Like Rwanda, Burundi deals with the so-called potato defect. Cafe Imports says it comes from a microorganism that gives some beans a raw-potato smell and taste, and that it cannot be spotted by looking at the coffee, green or roasted. It affects individual beans rather than whole lots, and research on removing it is ongoing.
Because stations differ so much, the tasting notes on a particular coffee are a better guide than any country-wide rule.