Mahembe #4 Mahembe #4 – Unique and elegant Rwanda Coffee. Bringing less-known areas to light. Why this coffee stands out? As we have noticed, Rwanda is not as popular as other coffee-producing countries in Africa, either because of its small production or because of its political history. Despite that, Mahembe #4 Read more…
Reconnecting with our 10 origins after the summer break After a long and well-deserved vacation, we are all getting back to our daily routines and activities. And, since we know it can be challenging, we thought it would be helpful to share with you an update on the 10 origins Read more…
It’s truly a pleasure tasting the finished roasts and thinking back at how they started in the early crop and tasting super fresh. I’m always amazed by what you roasters manage to pull out of it. Jamie Jongkind, Sales EU & Green Buyer January, before the harvest When I first Read more…
By Suzie, Morten and Jamie We published our first origin transparency report with price data from Rwanda today. We are very proud, and just the tiniest bit nervous for our numbers as they go out into the world. We stand behind our numbers, we know we pay our farmers and Read more…
One the goals going into a new Rwanda season this year was to diversify the profile range. To that end we asked our long-term partners, Aime & his father at the Gitesi washing station, to prepare some naturals for us. It was their first time with this process. Always exciting! To Read more…
Busy but beautiful times! … wait wait wait, it’s 2019 and August already? Are you sure?But… the summer of 2018 just ended?That pretty much sums up the feeling I had going into this summer, and I think all the staff over here in Oslo are with me. A bummer for me Read more…
If you want to create a direct relationship with a washing station or producer in Africa, you should consider Rwanda. “The country is so organised,” said Clay Parker of Rwanda Trading Company (RTC), “there is so much you can do if you want to work directly.” The organisation of the Read more…
Ever since I got into roasting coffee quite some years ago, before joining up with Nordic, I was always searching for personal stories on travels to origin. Without too much luck. I’ll try to fill that gap a little by giving you my personal and educational insight into Rwanda and Read more…
I have just returned from a trip to Rwanda where we visited our partners and cupped through a wide range of coffees coming out of this season’s harvest. We are excited about the coffees we will have in this year!
We love Rwandan coffee and have been working with many of the same suppliers for the last 5 to 6 years. They have consistently been working on their production, and we have seen the coffees being produced have great consistency in cup quality.
This year’s production volumes in Rwanda have returned to a more normal level after last year’s huge harvest. As a whole the production volume appears to be average, though some rule changes in how cherries are delivered has caused some regions to drop in volume more than others. Overall we have less coffee available than last year but the quality of the coffees is generally improved.
2015 was as a great year for us at Nordic thanks to all of you that’s supporting us as producers, exporters and clients. We know that many of you have great sales before Christmas and we would like to give you an update on fresh available and incoming coffees, as well as some good offers. Hopefully this will help you plan the purchase for the next months.
We would like to take this opportunity to give you all a 2014 wrap up, and an update of what is going on in 2015.
Overall 2014 has been a great year for us at Nordic. Our coffees have tasted great and have been very well received in the market, many baristas have performed well in competitions with our coffees, and most importantly we have had a return of satisfied customers increasing their annual volumes with us.
We are now partners and shareholders in Motherland Farmers, a coffee project in Rwanda, and we’re more or less finished with our first season as coffee producers. It’s been a great learning experience, and we are getting more humble than ever before in regards to coffee farming and production of high quality coffee.
The coming period can be a challenge for many roasters wanting to have fresh crop all year as they often run out of coffees from Centrals and Ethiopia/Kenya, and new arrivals from these regions won’t arrive until spring. This is why we have focused a lot now on other origins with great potential and opposite harvesting periods.
We currently have 4 lots of Mahembe coming in soon and one lot from a CWS (Coffee Washing Station) called Gitesi. Again this year it’s all exceptional coffees according to our standards. The four Mahembe lots are all slightly differentiated in flavor, but they all have that mature and warming Read more…
Just finished of this years “early crop” sourcing trip to Rwanda and Burundi. It’s still a little early to nail all our coffees, but I already found some beautiful batches of smaller quantities and it’s very promising for what’s to come. I had a few coffees on the cupping table Read more…
After recently spending three weeks in Rwanda I am pretty confident that the coffees we will get out of there next year will be amazing. We will aim at early shipments in July targeting coffees from the peak of harvest during April/May.