KARINGA

Notes of blackberry, lime, caramel

FACTORY: Karinga (Gitwe Farmers Cooperative Society)
REGION: Kiambu
HARVEST: November – January
VARIETY: Batian, SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11
ALTITUDE: 1,840 MASL
PROCESS: Washed

Karinga sits in Kiambu, the highest-producing coffee region in Kenya, where cool highland air and red volcanic soil in the uplands give the area's coffee its trademark grapefruit-bright acidity. The factory itself has been running since 1983, operated by the Gitwe Farmers Cooperative Society on behalf of around 650 members, each farming coffee alongside other crops on plots of roughly a hectare.

Every cherry reaches Karinga the same day it's picked, then gets depulped, fermented for 12 to 24 hours, washed four times, and dried on raised beds for eight to thirteen days. That's more washing than most Kenyan factories bother with.

It matters here, too. Coffee is competing with tea for land in Kiambu, and keeping production up hasn't come easy, even with help from Coffee Management Services, brought in specifically to lift output.

The cooperative does its real work in the field. Its committee sources seeds and seedlings for members from the Coffee Research Center, advises on fertiliser, and checks in on farms to make sure coffee isn't being crowded out by the beans and corn it's grown alongside.

This is an AB microlot, traceable straight back to the Karinga factory floor. Blackberry, lime, and caramel all show up in the cup together, carried by a juicy acidity and a mellow sweetness.

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