tasting notes: persimmon | mango | velvety | hazelnut
 
origin: rwanda
farm: buf - nyarusiza
region: kamegeri sector, nyamagabe district of southern province
altitude: 1700 meters
varietal: red bourbon
process: washed
 
This 100% red bourbon coffee was processed at Buf Café’s Nyarusiza washing station, at 1,743 metres above sea level in the south of Rwanda. Buf Café was founded in 2003 by Epiphanie Mukashyaka, a dynamic businesswoman and a source of inspiration to countless other female entrepreneurs in Rwanda’s coffee sector and beyond. Buf is now managed by Epiphanie and her son, Samuel Muhirwa, who is taking an increasingly active role in running and expanding the business.
 
Epiphanie, who was born in 1959, was widowed during the 1994 genocide - which claimed over 800,000 lives in just 3 months - but chose not to leave her family’s small coffee farm. Instead she set about rebuilding and developing her business and with it the local community. She started Buf Café in 2003, when she established Remera washing station with a loan from the Rwandan Development Bank and the assistance of the USAID-financed PEARL project.
 
This transformational programme was aimed at switching the focus in the Rwandan coffee sector from an historic emphasis on quantity to one of quality - and so opening up Rwanda to the far higher-earning specialty coffee market. The programme and its successor, SPREAD, have been invaluable in helping Rwanda’s small-scale coffee farmers to rebuild their production in the wake of the devastating 1994 genocide and the 1990s world coffee crash.
 
Processing here follows Rwandan standard, with a floating tank sort, 8-12 hour dry fermentation, second sort for weight using water shoots, then a 24 hour soak before hand washing and hand sorting, concluded by placement on raised drying beds on the mountain valley floor.