Kenia Iria-Ini
The Farm
This lot is processed at Kiamwangi, one of the three washing stations operated by the Iria-Ini Farmers’ Cooperative Society, located in Mathira, within Nyeri County, Kenya. The cooperative’s other two washing stations are Kamunyaka and Miiri, each named after the village where it is located.
The cooperative brings together hundreds of smallholder farmers, some of whom own as few as one hundred coffee trees, who deliver their cherries on foot or by motorcycle. Their farms are located between 1,700 and 1,900 meters above sea level, where they mainly cultivate the SL28, SL34, Ruiru 11, and Batian varieties. The name Iria-Ini means “place of milk” in the local language, referring to the fertility and agricultural abundance of the region.
Kiamwangi also receives support from Kamavindi Coffee Lab, a family-owned company founded in Embu in 1958. Through its training center and cupping laboratory, Kamavindi works closely with the cooperative to improve processing and post-harvest practices, helping to enhance coffee quality while providing producers with more direct access to international buyers.
Process Method
The ripe cherries are delivered to the Kiamwangi washing station, where they are sorted and pulped. The coffee then undergoes a 36-hour dry fermentation before being carefully washed with clean water.
After washing, the coffee is sun-dried on raised beds for 14 to 21 days. During this stage, it is regularly turned and hand-sorted to ensure even drying and maintain the consistency of the lot.
Origin
Although the coffee plant was introduced into Kenya from Arabia by Catholic missionaries around 1896, it was not until the early XX century that the coffee industry takes a strong boom in what was then a British colony.
Kenya is today one of the most respected and admired coffee origins. This is due not only to a combination of a reddish and fertile soil of volcanic origin, a moderate climate, equatorial light and varietals of native Arabica of the country (SL28, is the best known and used), but also by an incessant research on coffee growing , an excellent organization of small producers organized in cooperatives that seek excellence and above all that every small batch of green coffee is sold individually in the auctions of Nairobi so that each of them reach for their quality the price they deserve.
Auction bids are an extraordinary mechanism to make quality stand out so that both the producer is rewarded and the roaster who seeks it can acquire it.
Within a triangle formed by Mount Kenya, Nairobi and Machakos, is the Kenyan region of ‘Black Gold’. Some of the best coffees in the world grow here and represent approximately 85% or more of the country’s annual coffee harvest. The other part is found in western Kenya, in the Rift Valley and in the Taita area.
The beginnings of coffee farming in Kenya, at the beginning of the 20th century, were immortalized in the memory of Isak Dinesen in his famous book “Memories of Africa”.
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