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We are delighted to welcome back a single farm lot from Jean Marie Vianney (JMV) Usekanabagoyi for the fifth consecutive season. We have been consistently purchasing this coffee since 2021 when our exporting partners, Baho Coffee, began experimenting with smaller lot separations.

This initiative immediately piqued our interest and sparked discussions on how to expand and deepen this type of traceability. As buyers, it’s always exciting to learn more about the origin of coffee, but Emmanuel emphasized its benefits for Baho and its producer network as well. It provided an opportunity to directly support smallholders and potentially motivate them to continue in specialty coffee.

Usekanabagoyi cultivates Red Bourbon on his 2-hectare farm in the renowned Nyamasheke district of Rwanda and delivers cherry to the Ngoma station. Throughout the entire sorting, drying, storage, and milling process, his coffee is meticulously separated. This is no easy feat! This level of traceability and dedication to coffee cultivation is rare in a country where the average farm size is only 0.25 hectares, and coffees are often blended with cherry from thousands of other smallholders at centralized stations. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Emmanuel and the entire Baho team for making this dream a reality!

Our importing partner, Sundog Trading, shares their thoughts: After meeting JMV during our visit in 2022, we can confidently say that his coffee’s lively and dynamic characteristics perfectly complement his personality. From the very beginning, JMV has been fully committed to Baho protocols and dedicated to delivering each season to Ngoma. He takes additional steps at the farm level, such as selecting only the ripest cherries, floating, and sorting defects, before transporting the cherries to the station. In recognition of these extra efforts, JMV receives a bonus of +50 rwf/kg added to his cherry prices and a second payment of 50 rwf/kg later in the year.

When asked about the single farmer initiative, Emmanuel explained that these are farmers who cultivate coffee as a business and genuinely commit to their work. They serve as exemplary models for good agricultural practices, soil management, erosion control, environmental conservation, and providing employment opportunities for many other small farmers in need. Baho chose to process and market their production separately from others to motivate them. Selling coffee under their names boosts their pride and energy, making it easier to implement our quality control protocols and maintain comprehensive records of their farms. We aspire that, in the future, this coffee will be served in coffee shops under the names of these farm owners.

We are honored to continue featuring some of the pioneering single producer lots from Rwanda and eagerly anticipate continuing our investment in the future of this initiative. Our selection from JMV Usekanabagoyi is meticulously crafted, complex, and incredibly sweet, just as we have come to expect from the washed offerings we purchase from Baho. This coffee presents a harmonious balance between a darker, more saturated sweetness and clean, elegant stone fruit flavors. We can detect the notes of dried apricot, candied orange peel, fig jam, plum, cherry, vanilla, rooibos tea, baking spices, honey, and sugarcane.