Yemen Mocca Blend 80

Description

Our new crop, Yemen Mocca Blend 80, is produced by 400 farmers across Sana’a Governorate in the western midlands of Yemen and sourced through longtime milling and exporting company, Pearl of Tehama.

From our awesome importer:

“Yemen & Sana’s Governerate: Yemen is the oldest territory on Earth to cultivate coffee. It’s 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.)

Sana’a Governerate is a diverse and arid highland area in Yemen’s western mountain ranges. It contains the city of Sanaa, Yemen’s national capital. Coffee-growing families in this part of Yemen, similar to many others across the country, tend parcels of terraced land passed through many generations. Coffee is the one crop that continues to survive all others, both for the livelihood it provides as well as being a deep social tradition that keeps communities together. “Sanani” 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 particular area. Sanani coffee is widely regarded in Yemen as one of its best regional blends and is considered to be one of the most balanced. All Sanani coffee, as traditionally everywhere in Yemen, is 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. This particular Sanani blend is carefully curated by Pearl of Tehama from 400 of their partner farmers from across Sana’a.

Generational Knowledge & the Survival of Yemen’s Coffee: Maintaining coffee trees in a climate as dry, high, and uniquely challenging as Yemen’s western and northern ranges requires the kind of proven techniques that only generations of farming can establish.

Coffee farms here are iconically terraced on arid, incredibly steep slopes. 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 1,000 per hectare (compared to 4,000-6,000 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 vicious 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.

Pearl of Tehama: Pearl of Tehama, the miller and exporter who manages all transportation, milling, and exporting of partner farms’ coffee, 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.

Yemen’s ongoing civil war has not stopped the Muslot family and Pearl of Tehama from dutifully managing and exporting the coffee harvest of the farms and families they represent; something they can be very proud of given the conflict’s overwhelmingly ruinous effect on much of Yemen’s international trade. Not only this, but Pearl of Tehama has established a consultancy for other service providers in coffee, particularly exporters, to help expand Yemen’s coffee sector safety net and even increase the coffee’s availability and competitiveness abroad. Consulting covers the management of traceable harvest information, preparing technical reports from the field, correspondence with farmers and customer relationship management, harvest and processing calibration, and more. The guiding mission is to increase potential at both ends of the value chain: more available quality coffee from throughout Yemen’s historic producing territories; and greater buyer appetite all over the world thanks to expertly managed, traceable coffees being marketed.”

Unique, distinct, complex, and balanced. Enticing aroma with hints of cherry, blueberry, plum, caramel and dutch cocoa. Interesting body, both smooth, syrup-like, and also rich and heavy. Lots of flavor nuances in the cup; cocoa, earthiness, red fruits, anise, clove, and black tea, along with a subtle boozy quality. There’s not anything else quite like it!

$13.00 – $25.95