Kinunu
Rwanda
An elegant, delicate cup, with a bright citrus acidity, refined sweetness and notes of mandarin, lemon and berries. Well-balanced, with a good long finish.
Kinunu washing station, where this coffee is processed, lies on the shores of Lake Kivu, a large lake situated along Rwanda’s western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a beautiful place, with coffee trees growing down steep, fertile hills down to the shore of the lake.
This privately owned business was founded by the local Kubwimana family, they in turn have recently partnered with a Kigali-based specialty coffee investment company – resulting in a well-run and quality focused organization. With the main objective to manage and improve the quality of coffee processed at the washing stations.
Kinunu buys the coffee cherries from some 4,000 farmers who live and grow coffee near the washing station, it also has partnerships with local cooperatives and farmers’ associations. Almost all of these farms are small - typically less than a hectare of land each, farmers produce both coffee and subsistence food crops to feed their families. The ripe cherries are delivered to the washing station in a multitude of ways - in baskets on farmers’ heads, on bicycles, in trucks and even by boat.
At Kinunu the coffee cherries are carefully hand sorted before going through the wet mill and fermentation/soaking tanks. The washed beans are dried in the sun on raised screens (‘African beds’) overlooking the lake, and sorted several times prior to milling.