One of our fave origins is back! Only about the size of the US State of Maryland, Rwanda is one of the smallest and most densely populated countries in Africa. With approximately 90% of Rwanda's 11 million inhabitants working in agriculture, the countries many mountains and hills seem endlessly terraced and are intensively cultivated.
Introduced by German missionaries in 1904, coffee production started to ramp up in the 1930s under Belgian rule. Coffee has been the primary source of income since then, with more than 400,000 small-scale farmers relying on it for their livelihoods. These farms are extremely small, with “coffee gardens” of about 150 trees each. As part of the government's recovery efforts following the genocide of 1994, private central washing stations started opening in 2001. Today there are more than 330 washing stations throughout the country. The growth of these washing stations has increased quality considerably, prompting at least a 40% premium to Rwanda's export value.
I have handled dozens of Rwandan coffees since Badbeard's launched in 2006....some have been my absolute faves from East Africa, clean and intriguing cup profiles being the rule. Mostly small-scale and co-operatively produced, the coffee sector has been experiencing something of a renaissance of late and both washed- and natural process rival their more-exalted powerhouse neighbors, ethiopia and Kenya.
 

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