Kimondo AA, Tanzania

Sale price Price $17.75 Regular price

Technical Details

Tasting Notes: Brandywine, Date, Tart
Varietal(s): Kent & Bourbon
Processing: Fully Washed
Drying: Raised beds
Altitude: 1600-1800 masl
Farm(ers): Keremba Warioba and Mkunde Charchage
Region: Mbozi District
Country of Origin: Tanzania

Backstory

In 2016, Jacob, our founder, met Keremba in Melbourne. Both were calling Australia home. However, Keremba was already anticipating a return to Tanzania once his partner, Mkunde Chachage, finished her Phd. It was clear from the beginning that Keremba and Mkunde had their hearts set on improving Tanzanian lives using coffee as a medium so Jacob and Keremba began to dream and explore what that might look like.

As the Director of Coffee for 5 Senses, once Keremba returned Jacob was able to commit to Keremba’s first harvest, sight unseen. This enabled Keremba to move on with his vision and first harvest with a minimalized risk. Now, 5 years and 5 harvest later, Tenfold Coffee is the first company to bring Keremba and Mkunde’s coffee into the U.S. and we are honored.

The initial organization that Keremba set up is called Communal Shamba. It was established to facilitate the trade of green coffee from smallholder farmers in the southern highland region of Tanzania to the consuming world. Despite what one might think in the digital age, access or connections to the consuming world is still a huge challenge to overcome for most small holders.

After this, Communal Shamba teamed up with other fellow small holders to establish the agricultural co-operative society Mkulima Kwanza (when translated from Swahili this means “farmers first”). Mkulima Kwanza is set up to produce and process specialty coffee using advanced and sometimes experimental methods. Their primary hope is to increase farmers’ prices and reduce production costs all the while focusing on quality.

If that were not inspirational enough, Communal Shamba Coffee works with Mkulima Kwanza and the community in the Ihowa village to create change beyond better coffee prices. The members of Ihowa village identified education and health as the areas for intervention and betterment. Backed by Dr Chachage’s medical know-how and strong collaboration with the community, the sale of Mkulima Kwanza coffee is funding some valuable expansions for the local primary school and health clinic literally amongst the coffee farms.

(Too cool to not mention, in 2018, Dr. Mkunde Chachage earned a double recognition as ‘Best Scientist in Tanzania’ by the National Institute For Medical Research (NIMR) and ‘Best Research Scientist’ at her research center for her continuous effort finding permanent solutions for HIV, TB and Co-Infections.)

In regards to the this specific coffee, the Kimondo farm is the ‘model’ farm owned by Keremba and Mkunde. It exists to demonstrate best agricultural practices for the other small holders of the coop and especially those who might need to see a tangible example.

This year, we bought two coffees from this farm. This coffee is the AA, which loosely refers to quality - and thus pricing - but more specifically it refers to the size of the bean or screen size after the sorting process. We find it to be the 'brighter' of the two coffees exhibiting some really nice acidic notes - think ripe heir loom tomato.