Story

For our final washed Rwanda of the season, we’re thrilled to welcome back a single farm lot from Jean Marie Vianney (JMV) Usekanabagoyi. We’ve been consistently purchasing this coffee since 2021 when our exporting partners, Baho Coffee, first started experimenting with smaller lot separations. 

This initiative immediately sparked our interest and kickstarted discussions on how to expand and deepen this type of traceability.  As buyers, it’s always exciting to find more information about where coffee is coming from; but additionally, Emmanuel made it very clear that it was helpful to Baho and their producer network as well.  It created the opportunity to directly support smallholders and hopefully motivate them to continue in specialty. 

Usekanabagoyi grows Red Bourbon on his 2 hectare farm in the famed Nyamasheke district of Rwanda and delivers cherry to the Ngoma station. His coffee is kept separate throughout the entire process of sorting, drying, storing, milling, etc. No easy feat! This level of traceability and dedication to coffee growing is rarely seen throughout a country where the average farm size is only 0.25 hectares, and coffees are more commonly blended together with cherry from thousands of other smallholders at centralized stations. Many thanks go out to Emmanuel and the entire Baho team for making this dream a reality! 

Our importing partner, Sundog Trading, shares: After finally meeting JMV during our visit in 2022, we can confidently claim that the lively, dynamic characteristics of his  coffee align perfectly with his personality. Since day one, JMV has been on board with Baho protocols and dedicated to delivering each season to Ngoma. He takes a few extra steps at the farm level - like selecting only the ripest cherries, floating, and sorting defects - all before taking cherries to the station. For the 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 shared: These are farmers that do coffee farming as business and they really show full commitment to their work. They serve as models in good agricultural practices, soil management, erosion control, environmental conservation practices as well as giving jobs to many other small farmers in need. The reason why Baho selected to process and market their production separately from others is because we wanted to motivate them. Selling coffee in their names makes them proud and increases their energy and commitment. It is very easy to ask them to implement all our quality control protocols and it is also easy to have full information about their farms through our records taking system.  We wish that, in future, this coffee will be served in coffee shops in the names of these farm owners. 

We’re honored to continue featuring some of the very first single producer lots from Rwanda and look forward to continuing investment into the future of this initiative. Our selection from JMV Usekanabagoyi is structured, complex, and incredibly sweet - just as we’ve come to expect from the washed offerings that we purchase from Baho. This coffee presents a harmonious balance between a darker, saturated sweetness and clean, elegant stone fruit flavors. We’re tasting: dried apricot, candied orange peel, fig jam, plum, cherry, vanilla, rooibos tea, baking spices, honey, sugarcane.