This is a fully washed processed microlot from a single processing station in Butanyerera province, close to Burundi’s border with Rwanda. It’s herbal with a plum-like acidity and bittersweet cocoa. Mbasi Hill & Processing Site Butanyerera is a large, newly formed mountainous highland region in northern Burundi. The province borders Rwanda to the north and Ngozi, another significant coffee producing area, to the east. Kayanza, one of the “communes” of the province (and formerly its own province as well) is deeply associated with Burundi’s specialty coffee market and history. Previous to this current generation of hyper-regional private processors and exporters, the country’s coffee value chain was managed by a few large government-owned corporations, known as Sociétés de Gestion des Stations de Lavage (SOGESTAL, literally, “Washing Station Management Companies”). These formed a kind of oligopoly that, for better or worse, limited price competition, standardized processing, and managed all exportation. Burundi’s coffee production, the country’s largest cash crop by far, was entirely government-owned until the 1990s, and then slowly liberalized until the 2010s, during which decade the SOGESTALs sold most of their processing sites to small, private companies. Baho Coffee is one such company, who first started in Rwanda in 2017 and today manages a number of washing stations there. They also work extensively in Burundi, partnering with independent processors to market their coffees abroad. The Nyamahiti Coffee Washing Station is owned and managed by Ndayishimiye Samuel, which processes cherry from only 394 farmers on Mbasi hill, where the station is located. “Nyamahiti” means “the place where bitter gourds grow”, a name given to the area before it was ever developed for agriculture when bitter wild gourds covered the hillsides. Fully washed coffee at Nyamahiti Coffee Washing Station are collected daily from the surrounding farmers, sorted for imperfections, and then mixed together and depulped. They are fermented over night in large tanks, cleaned with fresh ground water the next morning, and then moved to raised screen tables to dry in the sun.
