This coffee is produced by legacy farmers of various sizes in the mountains of Eastern Haraz, a large natural preserve and agricultural area in Yemen’s Sana’a Governorate. Coffee-growing families in this part of Yemen, similar to many others across the country, tend parcels of terraced land passed through many generations. Haraz’s people have had coffee in the ground for six hundred years, producing and enjoying it about two centuries before Europeans even knew what coffee was.
Royal has had a relationship with the exporters of this coffee, the extended Muslot family, since Bob was contacted by a watermelon seed seller in Modesto in 1984, who in turn had a coffee connection in Yemen. He and Royal’s co-founder Pete McLaughlin traveled to Yemen together multiple times in those first years, feeling out of place but also absolutely entranced by the Muslot’s coffees. Bob continues to have a pitch-perfect taste memory of Yemen’s fruity naturals from the 80s and 90s.
Though Yemen has always represented a kind of living antiquity of coffee, producers here are just as capable of modern methods. Case in point is this microlot. Only 1000 pounds of coffee, anaerobically fermented, vacuum packed and air-shipped to Oakland expressly to be a Crown Jewel. The extra fermentation is a small tweak on top of centuries of tradition, and the result gives us a good glimpse into both: the enduring; and the inspired.
Yemen & Harazi Coffee
Yemen is the oldest territory on Earth to cultivate coffee. Its seed stock, originally transported from wild arabica landraces in Ethiopia, was used to create the world’s first ever coffee farms where coffee would be grown commercially for trade across the Arabian peninsula and eventually mainland Europe. (“Arabica” itself referred to the Arabian coffee supply that was the West’s first in history.)
Maintaining coffee trees in a climate as harsh and uniquely challenging as Yemen’s western and northern ranges requires the kind of proven techniques that only generations of farming can figure out. Coffee farms are iconically terraced on arid, incredibly steep slopes. Where irrigation is not available, bore holes are dug manually into the rock to access individual water reserves for each tree wherever rain is scarce. Coffee trees are spaced generously, about 1000 per hectare (compared to 4000-6000 common in Latin America), both by necessity on the narrow terraces, as well as for better groundwater access and erosion control. Raising young coffee trees is a matter of hardening them for a lifetime of mountainous elements and water scarcity. Older coffee trees become very spacious and tall, and often end up hanging their branches over the terrace edge, known locally as “hanging gardens”. Above the coffee, shade trees are carefully selected and positioned for how well they block water evaporation. As can be imagined, productivity is very low in such conditions. And still, over one million people work in Yemen’s coffee trade, from farm to export.
“Harazi” is a term of terroir distinction, similar to “Kona”, that refers to high-quality heirloom coffee varieties produced in the unique climate and soil of this part of Sana’a, where subtropical conditions and available water springs allow coffee farmers to irrigate—something almost unheard of in the majority of coffee-producing areas in Yemen.
All Haraz coffee, as traditionally everywhere in Yemen, is typically processed as a natural: hand-picked, sorted for consistency, and dried in a single layer in full sun on raised beds or rooftops. Due to the arid climate and slow maturation patterns, coffee is picked almost year round.
Pearl of Tehama & Processing
Pearl of Tehama, a miller and exporter, is a family business founded in 1970. For many years, all coffee was exported under the name of the family patriarch and founder, Ali Hiba Muslot. After his death in 1980 his three sons continued using the family name until 2012, when the family business, including other trades and retail, was split up. The coffee export business was reborn as Pearl of Tehama for Import, Export, and C.A.S, and is still owned by Ms. Fatoum Muslot, the late Muslot’s daughter. Fatoum’s eldest son, Yasser Al-Khaderi, is the company’s general manager.
This particular lot of coffee from Haraz was carefully curated by Pearl of Tehama from 200 of their partner farmers. Breaking from tradition, however, it was processed centrally, in very small installments. Cherries otherwise destined for families’ rooftops or raised screens were instead delivered to the Muslot’s central processing site where they were packed into sealed tanks to ferment between 48-72 hours anaerobically. Once fermented, the sticky, wilted cherries were moved directly to raised beds to dry in the sun, a process that took 15-20 days. Fully dried cherry pods were then stored in climate controlled facilities to allow moisture to equilibrate, before sampling for quality control.
