How does Coffee Origin affect Taste?
Coffee… it’s not just coffee. Brew freshly roasted speciality coffee, and say hello to a kaleidoscope of coffee flavour! That’s because each coffee-growing country creates unique crops with different tasting notes and flavours. Everything from climate and rainfall to soil nutrients and altitude play their part in the final characteristics of that bonnie coffee bean.
Coffee plants grow in four main parts of the world:
- South America
- Central America
- Africa (hey, Kenya!)
- Asia
Coffees from different locations have distinct profiles. South American coffees tend to be aromatic and smooth-bodied, often treating us to nutty flavours, while African coffees have a stellar sweetness and bright notes of berries and fruit.
Try them all! Go on a coffee holiday and find your fave! Your mug awaits…
Kenya Coffee: A Very Brief History
Don’t fret. We’re not gonna set you off snoring with reams of history. We don’t do boring at Two Chimps. 😉
So, Kenya was pretty late to this whole coffee-growing thing. Yep, even though its neighbour had been harvesting coffee plants for centuries.
The earliest imports to Kenya were probably in 1893, when French missionaries brought coffee plants (probs the Bourbon varietal) from the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The first harvest was a few years later, in 1896, and came mainly from large, British-run coffee estates.
Fast forward to 1933, and we arrive at the Coffee Act. This important piece of legislation (should be in the GCSE textbooks, imo) meant that Kenyans could auction coffee in Kenya itself. Before, Kenya coffee beans were sold in London.
Fast forward again and we find another Act: the 1954 Swynnerton Plan. This consolidated African smallholdings and enabled Kenyan agriculture to develop. It also – crucially – moved coffee production into Kenyan hands. The result? Kenyan smallholder farmers could massively increase the amount of high-quality coffee they produced.
Still with us? Awesome.
Kenyan Coffee Today
Nip over to Kenya today, and you’ll find Kenyan coffee beans growing on large estates and small farms. Kenyan coffee is mainly arabica (the good stuff) and maintains pretty exceptional traceability records. This is great news; it means we can locate a coffee back to the farmer or estate who grew it!
Kenya has put lots of effort into developing its coffee. Farmers are forward-thinking and uber-knowledgeable. They know their beans inside out! Kenyans trade the coffee using unique auctioning methods – the very same methods their grandparents established in 1934!