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Bwenda

$24.00 NZD

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Size 250g

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Rwanda Bwenda

Producer – Bwenda Washing Station

Location – Southern Nyamagabe

Farm – Various local farms

Variety – Red Bourbon

Altitude – 1700 MASL

Process – Washed

Importer – Langdon Coffee Merchants

Tasting Notes – Apple, Baking Spices, Caramel

Roasted For – Filter

Bernard Uwitije, from Nyamagabe in Southern Rwanda, launched his first wet mill in 2016 with the Rwanda Trading Company. He expanded quickly, refining his skills while increasing volume without sacrificing quality. In 2018, he founded Bwenda to support isolated farmers. Bwenda processed its first cherries in 2019, and Bernard has since focused on farmer support programs and expanding the mill’s processing capacity.

About

187 km south-west of Kigali city is the Bwenda washing station. Established by Bernard Uwitije, Bwenda is named after the cell of land it’s on, and occupies a small area of 2-3 hectares. The station employs 3 people full-time, with the addition of seasonal work for around 60 casual workers during the harvest season - 85% of which are women. Around 1600 smallholder farmers in the community of Bwenda contribute cherries to the station, where the coffee is collected and processed with great care and expertise.

Hailing from Nyamagabe in Southern Rwanda, a region where coffee is a key agricultural product, Bernard Uwitije began his journey in the coffee sector by trading locally processed coffee, before establishing his first wet mill near his hometown in 2016 through his partnership with Rwanda Trading Company (RTC). Bernard used the first year to learn the intricacies of successful wet mill operations, before opening a second washing station the following season, where he honed his skills in processing larger volumes without sacrificing quality.

In 2018, Bernard founded Bwenda after noticing that a group of isolated farmers lacked access to a nearby washing station for high-quality coffee processing. The first season at Bwenda in 2019 saw the processing of just one container of cherries. Since then, Bernard has been developing various programs to support the farmers who supply Bwenda, offering extension services while also working to expand the wet mill's capacity.

Located in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, Rwanda contains lush green mountainous landscapes, magnificent waterways and a committed coffee community. Having deep roots in coffee dating as far back as the early 1900s, coffee has become a key component of Rwanda's economy, supporting over 400,000 smallholder farmers. Rwanda is regarded as one of Africa’s top coffee producing countries and is gaining recognition for providing traceability and transparency in their lots. With new producing and processing methods and innovative technology, Rwanda continues to evolve to help push the current coffee landscape.

The Variety

In 1859, Bourbon seeds arrived in Brazil, sent for by the Brazil central government after hearing that coffee growing on the island of Reunion, then called Bourbon, were more productive and of higher quality than the Typica variety. Now that the Yellow Bourbon variety exists, the original Bourbon is distinguished as Red Bourbon. In the 1930’s, different strains of Red Bourbon were bred at the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) in the state of Sao Paulo and distributed to farmers in 1939. Studying the success of different selections of Red Bourbon planted in different regions with distinct conditions helped researchers understand the effects of environmental variations on coffee varieties.

As one of the main varieties grown in Rwanda, it is recognised for its complex and full-bodied profile with bright acidity and sweetness.