The story
Coffee is a newcomer to Rwanda compared with its neighbours. The national export board, NAEB, says German settlers introduced it in the early 1900s. Under Belgian rule in the 1930s and 1940s, growing coffee became compulsory, according to the trader Sucafina, and the aim was cheap coffee in large amounts rather than quality. Most of the money, Sucafina notes, left the country with the beans.
Coffee still mattered after independence. By 1970 it was Rwanda's largest export, Sucafina says, and from 1973 it was against the law to pull coffee trees out of the ground. A collapse in world prices around 1990 hit the economy hard, and then came the genocide of 1994. The importer Cafe Imports says nearly a million people were killed, and the coffee trade, like the rest of the economy, was shattered for years.
The rebuilding that followed is part of why Rwandan coffee is known today. In the early 2000s the government chose specialty coffee as one route to recovery, with a national coffee strategy that pushed for quality. Rwanda also began hosting Cup of Excellence auctions, a competition that puts top lots in front of international buyers; Sucafina dates the first Rwandan one to 2008.
Rwanda is a small producer. NAEB puts output at between 267,000 and 420,000 bags a year from about 42,000 hectares, and Cafe Imports says the country supplies less than 0.2 percent of the world's coffee. There are no big estates to speak of. NAEB says about 400,000 smallholder families grow coffee, and Sucafina says most of them farm less than a quarter of a hectare.
The importers group the coffee land by province. The Western Province runs along the shore of Lake Kivu, where Cafe Imports buys from washing stations such as Kabrizi and Kigeyo and from Gishamwana Island in the lake. The Southern Province includes the areas around Butare and Nyanza, the Northern Province includes Rulindo, and the Eastern Province includes Ngoma District. NAEB says coffee is grown in most provinces below 1,900 metres.
Nearly all of it is one type of plant. NAEB describes the crop as mainly Bourbon-type Arabica, and Sucafina says Bourbon makes up 95 percent of the country's coffee trees. Importers also list French Mission Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai and a local variety called Mibirizi.
How it's processed
A coffee bean is the seed of a small red fruit called a cherry. Until the early 2000s most Rwandan farmers stripped the fruit off at home, fermented and washed the seeds, and dried them on the ground, Sucafina says. The result was a low-grade coffee sold as "semi-washed".
The big change was the washing station: a central mill where farmers sell their ripe cherries and trained staff do the processing. Sources disagree on the date of the first one; Sucafina says 2001, while Cafe Imports links the first station, built with USAID support, to 2004. Either way, Sucafina now counts more than 300 of them, and says better processing has added at least 40 percent to the export value of Rwandan coffee.
Most Rwandan coffee is washed: the skin and fruit come off before the seed is dried. The importer Nordic Approach describes one partner's routine in detail, with the coffee fermented for 10 to 12 hours, washed in channels, soaked in clean water, then dried on raised beds for up to 15 days under shade nets when the sun is strong. Staff hand-sort the coffee while it dries. Cafe Imports and Nordic Approach also buy natural coffees, dried with the whole fruit on, and Cafe Imports lists honey and anaerobic lots as well.
There is one known problem. In Rwanda, Burundi and to a lesser extent Congo, some beans carry what the trade calls the "potato defect". Nordic Approach links it to the antestia bug, and Cafe Imports says it gives an affected bean a smell and taste like raw potato after roasting. It can't be seen in the green coffee, so importers cup and sort carefully, and research continues.
Harvest starts in late February near Lake Kivu and in early March elsewhere, according to NAEB, and can run to August in parts of the north. Cafe Imports and Sucafina give March to June as the main season.
What it tastes like
Rwanda's hills give a range of flavours rather than one house style. Nordic Approach lists red berries, plum, cacao, blackberries, florals and citrus fruit as typical notes across its Rwandan coffees.
The washing station and the process matter. Nordic Approach describes washed coffee from one station as full-bodied and fruity, with red berry and blackcurrant notes, washed coffee from another as bright and perfumed with florals, and naturals as sweet and syrupy with ripe red fruit and citrus.
Because a single lot can come from hundreds of small farms delivering to one station, the tasting notes on each coffee are the best guide to what is in the bag.