So what is characteristic of Burundi’s coffees?

It’s always hard to say, or define a global profile of a coffee, above all when it’s from country where an average farmer owns around 100 coffee bushes, producing perhaps 1 kg of cherries per bush (5 kg of cherries make approximately 1 kg of green coffee)… with this you can have an idea how many farmers you need to make even a single tiny microlot like those participating!

Anyway, I would say that Burundi’s coffees have two main aromatic notes: sweet & floral.

A good solid and consistent Burundi coffee would have either one or the other as dominant, quite balanced and full bodied.

I also had the opportunity to visit one washing station near Kayanza, and it is actually very interesting to see how the coffee model is there.

Mostly you have a washing station where hundreds of small farmers come to sell their coffee (on cherries). This is so different from Latin America models, you don’t have coffees coming out only from one farmer but from a washing station. Washing stations get later to get different lots of different qualities. This washing station for example shows us a small lot they are preparing (for which they’ve trained farmers in good agricultural practices as well as in picking). It is a well differentiated lot, coming from a same hill and coming from farmers that are all members of a cooperative. So it’s a full traceable coffee but with thousands of producers. All this lot is a fully washed, and as in all the country, from the bourbon varietal.

Ángel from the Belco team