Passenger’s last sourcing trip to Kenya occurred in February, 2020 - shortly before the Coronavirus pandemic shut down international travel for a lengthy stretch. A memorable highlight of that last visit to Kenya was our time spent with the Mbature family at Kamavindi Estate in Embu.

In contrast to the other Kenyan lots in our most recently released collection that were purchased from cooperatives representing hundreds if not thousands of smallholder coffee farmers, Kamavindi AA was sourced directly from a private estate. So, while our other recent releases (Kii, Marua, and Kimandi, etc.) are examples of “community lots” processed at cooperative-managed wet mills, this particular lot was fully produced by the Mbature family at Kamavindi.

The original Kamavindi farm was established by the late John Njiru Mbature in the 1950’s with the planting of 100 coffee trees: the maximum that native Kenyans were permitted to cultivate under British colonial law at the time. When, a few years later, the coffee planting restrictions eased somewhat, an additional 500 trees were planted on the 20 hectare (approx. 50 acres) estate. At the present time, John’s son Peter Mbature leads the management of Kamavindi with the support and collaboration of his mother Hellen Weveti and sister Gladwell Wanjira. The farm currently has about 10,000 coffee trees under cultivation, with SL28 the majority variety. Peter is an incredibly hardworking and ambitious coffee producer with an inspiring appetite for progressive approaches to agronomy and processing. In addition to his ongoing efforts to improve the quality of the coffees produced at Kamavindi, Peter actively shares knowledge with other coffee producers throughout Kenya and is building an educational training center to host educational courses on coffee processing and farm management.

This particular lot is an AA-screen size selection from the 2022 harvest. The coffee cherries (a mix of SL28 and Ruiru 11) were handpicked and carefully sorted to ensure even ripeness before being floated to remove additional defects. After being depulped, the coffee underwent 18-20 hours of dry fermentation before being repeatedly washed in fresh water until the mucilage was thoroughly removed. After a final washing in channels to sort by density, the coffee was dried on raised beds until the moisture content reached approximately 10.5%.