I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest. I’m not going to let you get it! If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee. That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.
I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still. So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks. Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks. The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.
It was another week in the heart of Central Africa. I got another taste of what I’m diving into. I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many. Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.
Coffee Guy