World’s Best Of Best Coffee – Rwanda 2018

Rwanda Coffee Awarded “Best Of The Best”, “Coffee Lover’s Choice”

 

Cup of coffee

You have not visited Rwanda unless you have had a cup of the “best of the best” coffee grown in Rwanda. The Rwanda National Coffee brand delivers the greatest quality experience and prides itself on the continuous effort to offer a premium product.  Illy caffè has named Rwanda’s Ngororero Coffee Washing Station as the Best of the Best at the third annual 2018 Ernesto Illy International Coffee Award (EIICA). Alongside Rwanda, coffee beans from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India and Nicaragua were chosen to compete as finalists, following analysis at Illy’s Quality Lab at its Trieste, Italy headquarters. The Best of the Best jury included Mark Pendergrast, author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World; Peter Giuliano, Chief Research Officer at the Specialty Coffee Association, Sunalini Menon, Director of Quality Control for the Coffee Board of India, and Founder of Coffee Labs, in Bangalore; and Ernesto Velasquez, a second-generation coffee producer from San Antonio in Honduras, among others.

All nine finalists, spanning four continents, are ingredients in the legendary illy blend, celebrated for decades for its unparalleled richness, complexity and consistency.

“It is an honor and a pleasure to recognize Ngororero Coffee Washing Station and Ms. Muzika for their achievement, and that of all of our finalists, who are focused on producing the highest-quality coffee through sustainable methods,” said Andrea Illy, Chairman of illycaffè.

Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world, behind only petroleum, and has become a mainstay of the modern diet. It’s estimated that worldwide humans drink over two billion cups of coffee per day.  Coffee grown worldwide traces its heritage back centuries to the ancient coffee forests on the Ethiopian plateau. There, legend says the goat herder Kaldi first discovered the potential of these beloved beans. The story goes that that Kaldi discovered coffee after he noticed that after eating the berries from a certain tree, his goats became so energetic that they did not want to sleep at night. Kaldi told the abbot of the local monastery about this and the abbot came up with the idea of drying and boiling the berries to make a beverage. He threw the berries into the fire, whence the unmistakable aroma of what we now know as coffee drifted through the night air. The now roasted beans were raked from the embers, ground up and dissolved in hot water: so was made the world’s first cup of coffee.

In Rwanda, Coffee was introduced in Rwanda in 1904 by German missionaries; however, commercial production only really ramped up in the 1930s, under Belgian rule. The Belgian Colonial government focused on covering as much area under coffee as possible, creating a ‘high production-low quality’ for many producers in the country at the time, then a considerable interest in coffee developed as it was the sole revenue-generating commodity for rural families.

Coffee Farmers

The best coffee in Rwanda doesn’t happen by chance. The National Coffee Brand Values are built on the reflection of what the Rwandan coffee industry and Rwanda as a country stands for. They are deeply rooted in the specific ways in which they invest their pride and effort and how they choose to cultivate process and deliver their coffee to the world. Coffee is picky; it can only be grown in equatorial climates at certain temperatures and elevation levels and Rwanda possesses ideal coffee-growing conditions such as volcanic soil, high altitudes, regular rainfall temperature which favor the slow maturation of coffee bean, creating a unique taste in the cup.

In Rwanda, coffee is mainly grown at elevations that range from 1200 to 1800 meters above sea level.  97% of Rwandan coffee production is arabica mainly bourbon type while robusta accounts for 3%. Rwanda coffee has a silky, buttery creamy body that it carries into the aftertaste with floral notes of Ethopian Yirgacheffe Coffee and also an acidity of the Kenyan coffee. The aroma gives off a lemon and orange flavor with floral notes that complement the sweet citrus qualities with a feel of caramel in the aftertaste. A sweet flavor that is given off by a good Rwanda coffee suggests caramelized cane sugar along with spice notes of cinnamon, clove, allspice as well as rose floral aromas. These characteristics are almost similar to other East African coffees like the one from Kenya and Zimbabwe Coffee.

Coffee beans

Coffee plays a major role in the economy of the country, contributing significantly to foreign exchange earnings and to the monetisation of the rural economy. Currently, 400,000 small holder farm families produce it and depend on it for their livelihoods. Between July 2017 to June 2018, coffee exports earned Rwanda about $66 million against $58 million in the previous year.

For a coffee farm tour email us [email protected]

Or checkout our coffee itinerary ;  http://www.astepintonature.com/day-trips/1-day-coffee/

 

November 2018
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