Background info: 

Our first Rwandan for the year 2025 is so refreshing; highlighting the terroir perfectly in the cup. This coffee was so great last harvest we had to bring it back and marvel at its beauty. Shyira washing station was built in 2017 collecting and processing cherries of neighbouring farmers. It is also known as one of the highest-located washing stations in Rwanda.

All cherries are hand-sorted before pre-pulped, meaning they are placed in floatation tanks where they remove cherries that float to the top. The coffee is then fermented in concrete tanks for 12 hours during this time the fermented parchment is agitated throughout the day by way of ceremonial foot stomping. This encourages low-density parchment to float and to clean any residual mucilage. The parchment is then separated and graded before a final post-wash rinse.

We have spent quite a bit of time honing this coffee in, tasting with a bigger team, sharing our notes, and cross-referencing. This wider pool of notes ensures that we can give a more accurate description of this coffee. The theme throughout this coffee was notes of stone fruit, a tussle between nectarines and peaches tied with this citrus acidity upfront on filter. We also picked up notes of orange candy on filter but even more so on espresso with an elegant tea-like finish. On milk we got notes of pecan pie and a shout of hazelnut praline, we decided to stick to pecan pie. Interestingly the tea notes we got on the finish on our filter popped up as boba tea on the milk.