Rwanda Karora Natural

We always look forward to each new harvest from the sisters Immaculate, who run the company Nyamurinda Coffee Growers – their coffees consistently maintain an impressively high standard. This microlot from the 2025 summer harvest is no exception, offering a distinctive character of its own. It brings to mind Japanese plum wine, Umeshu.

In the cup, we find notes of intensely sweet plums, dried apricots, and red fruits. The aftertaste is full-bodied and rounded, with a fruit acidity that balances and elevates the coffee’s dark, berry-like sweetness. The coffee comes from their new washing station, Karora, where they actively work to support women smallholder farmers in the region by purchasing their coffee cherries.

Coffee from Nyamurinda Coffee Growers has been with us at Gringo from day one, and many of you surely know that their company was founded by two sisters, Francine Nyiramana and Immaculée Mukamana. After the two sisters lost almost their entire family in Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide, they took the courageous step to return to their family’s land to start a coffee plantation. Since then, Nyamurinda has grown and this coffee comes from their new washing station Karora. All of the coffee in this natural lot are grown by smallholder coffee farmers that live in the proximity of the washing station.

Nyamurinda is a company that is driven by women and the belief that when a woman is economically empowered, the whole family will prosper. 100% of the company is owned by women, 85% of employees are women, and 75% of the coffee farmers that Nyamurinda Coffee works with are women.

Our own Pernilla spent a week with the sisters and their families, staying in their house, sharing their everyday lives. Francine runs a school and Immaculee runs a coffee shop in Kigali so Pernilla also got to see these parts of their business. But of course coffee was the main goal with the trip, and several days were spent visiting the washing station and the farmers, talking with the employers and the producers, cupping with them and showing our appreciation of the fine work they do in maintaining such high quality.

THE COFFEE FROM CHERRY TO GREEN BEAN

This is the fifth year the sisters´are doing the their Natural coffee fermentation and the qualilty improves every year. Coffee cherries are picked and brought to the washing Karora washing station from the smallholder farmers. Cherries then immediatly float in order to remove unripe cherries.

After all this thorough sorting is completed, the cherries are moved to special sorting tables, where the cherries go through another round of sorting out defects. The cherries are then moved to raised beds for further drying. The drying process takes approximately three to four weeks depending on the level of sunlight. During the drying process, cherries are periodically rotated to ensure even airflow.

After the cherries are dried, they are put in bags and then spend another month of resting before they are moved to a dry mill where the dried pulp and mucilage is removed from the coffee seed. And finally - just before export - one last round of sorting happens, by hand - to remove any broken or insect damaged beans.