Fruity, slick and juicy. We love this new offering from the Kivu region of Eastern DR Congo. Our new Gera DR Congo boasts a number of complex fruit and floral notes including melon, strawberry, rose, and cinnamon. We called it fun, zesty and sweet. A must-try for lovers of interesting fruit-foward coffees with a zesty kick!
About. SOPACDI is an organization made up of 5,600 coffee farmers, roughly 20 percent of whom are women, located near Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Members represent several different ethnic groups and are all smallholder farmers (with fewer than 2 hectares of farmland on average) who deliver ripe coffee cherry to SOPACDI through the organization’s 10 collection subgroups. Joachim Munganga, a farmer himself, founded SOPACDI in 2003 by restoring a washing station in the area, providing service and market access to growers living in these extremely remote highlands. Before SOPACDI, farmers had no means to transport coffee to the markets and instead were forced to simply barter their coffee locally for food, clothing, and necessities.
At this washing station, coffee is depulped the day it is delivered and fermented in open air tanks for 12-18 hours. It is then soaked for 8-12 hours before being passed through the washing canal where the mucilage is removed and the coffee is then sorted. The coffee is then dried on raised beds under a cover of shade for 20-30 days. This particular “microstation”serves 90 producers, including 21 women. The group represents about 30 total hectares of coffee farmland, which is about 1/3 hectare per producer on average.
