Notes: Jasmine, white peach, rose
Country: Tanzania
Region: Karatu District, Arusha Region
Varietal: Gesha
Process: Raised bed washed
Altitude: 1,650-1800 MASL
Description:
Under the watchful guidance of sibling team Neel and Kavita Vohora, the Edelweiss and Finagro farms have begun to blossom from well-managed estate farms, spanning 1000 acres across multiple ridges of the Ngorongoro caldera in northern Tanzania, into an innovative and genre-defying coffee enterprise.
The plants were grown from seed stock related to the New World’s initial Gesha trees, first noticed on the Peterson farm Hacienda la Esmeralda in Panama in the early aughts, but brought to Costa Rica’s CIRAD facility as early as the 1960s from a research station in Tanzania.
Vohora’s farms continue to innovate in processing methodology as well. Rather than resting on the laurels of tradition, nearly all of their coffee (including the commercial volumes of larger lots) goes through a cherry maceration period prior to processing. For microlots, like this Gesha, the timeframe for whole cherry “pre-fermentation” is determined specifically by cultivar, through a trial-and-error process that’s been honed into precise protocols to bring out the best in each variety. In this case, the Gesha harvest will macerate in whole cherry on raised beds under protective tarps for 4 days prior to depulping and then fermenting in tile-lined fermentation tanks. Afterwards, it is washed and dried down the hill on Finagro’s extensive raised bed network. Recently implemented protocols to “skin dry” — that is, initially dry-washed parchment under shade for 24 hours – helps protect the delicate coffee from too much sun before completing the 2-3 week drying process. After this is finished, parchment is stored in GrainPro until it can be milled in Vohora’s facility back in Arusha.
Ngorongoro, the world’s largest unbroken caldera, looms over a verdant landscape, the shell of an ancient, ruptured volcano. Inside its walls, a wildlife conservation area cut off from much access to the outside world, is home to hordes of zebra, eland, gazelles, wildebeests, two prides of lions, hyenas, hippopotami, and scores of other local birds and mammals, including a small population of black rhino. The Maasai, among the region’s more visible residents with distinctive red flannel robes and unchanged traditions of nomadism, are frequent visitors, passing through the crater with their goat and cattle herds in tow. The caldera’s wildlife are no strangers to the farms, either. Native forest corridors on the estates allow freedom of movement for the animals as they migrate, but it’s fairly common to find damage to the coffee trees; the most frequent offenders being elephants and water buffalo.
The Vohora’s estates are nestled into the caldera’s outer ridges, bordering the park. Since 1971, the Vohoras have owned about 1000 acres of farmland on the southern exterior slopes near the town of Karatu. Neel’s grandfather arrived from India, first working for the British colonists as a farm manager prior to the nation’s independence. Neel’s father, Ajai, heads the export business from nearby Nairobi, and Kavita runs the milling and sampling operations back in Arusha.