Celebrating Genuine Origin Coffees from Kenya
Descriptions of Kenyan coffees tend to be as ebullient as the writers who pen them, but the same essence still always comes through.
“The good samples — and there were many — were not just exceptional, but exceptional in a thoroughly Kenyan way,” Kenneth Davids and Jason Sarley wrote in the Coffee Review in 2015, reviewing 32 coffees from Kenya. “And [they] often provoked rather repetitive key descriptors: deep, pungent, sweetly tart; black currant, dark chocolate, various citrus notes, hints of flowers.”
Counter Culture founder Peter Giuliano has written that coffee from Kenya has an “especially beautiful flavor almost never tasted in coffees from other countries. It’s a tangy, dark-fruit flavor, mouthwatering and compelling, memorable and unique.”
The delightful and reserved James Hoffman, in The World Atlas of Coffee, offers: “Kenyan coffees are renowned for their bright, complex berry/fruit qualities as well as their sweetness and intense acidity.”
While the green coffee buyer for the Specialty Coffee Advisor blog is moved to poetry. “Kenyan coffees are as majestic as the morning African sun rising over the savannah,” the buyer writes. “These are powerful, bright coffees that run the gamut from lemony to peppery, from blackberry fruit to winey richness. … A great Kenyan is not a subtle delicate coffee but rather a coffee full of power and character.”
We agree, whole heartedly, with all of the above. Which is why we’re using the 28 days of February to celebrate our 28 coffees from Kenya. Each day, we’ll be sharing a few details — love letters, cupping notes, raves and reflections — about a different coffee. We hope you’ll click over to check them out — or sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage, to receive a few roundups of all the Kenya love.
And, to show you our love as well, during the month of February, ALL COFFEES FROM KENYA SHIP FREE! Just use code SHIPKENYA2ME at checkout.
Without further ado, have you met our AA Ndurutu? …
In The World Atlas of Coffee, James Hoffman writes that the red soils in Nyeri “produce some of the best coffee in Kenya.”
Genuine Origin AA Ndurutu was grown at 1700 meters ASL in Nyeri, on the foothills of the Aberdare range, overlooking ice-peaked Mount Kenya — an extinct volcano.
Approximately 570 smallholder farmers deliver cherry to the Ndurutu factory, one of seven wet mills in the Rutuma Farmers Cooperative Society. It’s a coffee with a balanced body, bright acidity and official flavor notes of lime, vanilla, clove and orange.
Jess Hobbs, our client services expert, cupped the GO AA Ndurutu in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with Nobletree Coffee. She reported back:
“I absolutely love the body on this coffee — huge, really round and clean, with a slightly sweet finish. It has a hint of the savory but was really well balanced, with a sweetness like a green tomato jam. It was also rich and complex — I got a little clove, lime, vanilla and juicy ripe orange in there as well.”
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To learn more about The Genuine Origin Coffee Project, please visit our site,order green coffee samples or say hello on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
