There is a ton of excitement around here about the coffees from Edelweiss/Finagro. It has quickly become something of a staff favorite, especially out West in LA. It may be because the coffee has something of a mixed personality, in the best of ways. African coffees are perennially among our favorites on the cupping table, but they are also among the most challenging from sensory perspective. The brilliantly unapologetic acidity and occasional savory tastes in great Kenyan coffees can sometimes be intimidating to the uninitiated. The complex floral and perfume-like aromatics combined with the lemongrass and delicate citric notes in fresh coffees from Southern Ethiopia can be so intoxicating that consumers accustomed to old or milder coffees don’t quite know what to make of them at first. But the Edelweiss, and Tanzania coffee in general, seems to bridge the gap with of the tastes coffee drinkers are familiar with in Central American coffees while keeping a very distinctly African identity. The coffees from Oldeani have been getting better and better each season, and still have not even glimpsed their true peak.

Tanzania has long been growing coffee in the shadows of more familiar African nations like Kenya and Ethiopia. In recent years its neighbor to the north (Rwanda) pulled off an astonishing climb up the Specialty ladder and has made a compelling bid for the attention of quality coffee drinkers worldwide. Don’t think coffee farmers in Tanzania haven’t noticed. But what are they doing about it?

Before we look into that, I’d like first to share a little history. Growing coffee as a cash crop in this area first started in earnest during the colonial period. In the late 1800’s the region was controlled by Germany. Settlers established estates and planted coffee throughout the early part of the 20th century. After WWI the League of Nations transferred administrative rights to the area (called Tanganyika) to the United Kingdom. When the British took over in 1920, coffee planting really took off and coffee exporting became a big deal. Then in 1973 the new government instituted a massive land reform policy in the Kilimanjaro area that transferred ownership of the coffee estates to local societies. It didn’t work out very well, though, as most of the farms fell into quickly disrepair. Production fell apart, and many of the farms were abandoned altogether by 1980. Today it is back on the rise. There is still a bit too much state involvement perhaps, but the coffee industry has begun to liberalize. A few artifacts remain and the complicated tax system and the stifling bureaucracy of the national coffee board have not yet been fully resolved, but signs of progress are there.

I first got involved in Tanzania about three years ago when I visited to attend a coffee conference. It was there that I met a pair of young siblings who had recently made a major life change. After growing up in Kenya and studying abroad in the UK, they returned to Africa with the idea that they’d breath life into a farm that had been in the family since the 70’s but which hadn’t been given a lot of love lately. The meeting was fortuitous. We became friends quickly and ever since have been collaborating to work on sorting out the quality puzzle.

The “farm” is actually a collection of farms: Edelweiss, Ascona, and Helgoland border each other along the outer ridge of the Ngorongoro Crater. Having moved from German to British ownership in the early part of the century, the farms were purchased by an American multinational that merged all the farms in the area. But by 1970 they had gone bankrupt, and the banks put the farms up for auction. They were purchased in 1971 by the late B.N. Vohora and are currently being managed by his grandson Neel and granddaughter Kavita.

Over the last few years there have been massive improvements. It is a testament to the efforts of Neel and Kavita that the quality of the coffees has been getting steadily better as a result of renewed investment in the farm infrastructure. They’ve installed a shaded drying area and have been experimenting lately with drying times and methodology to try to get the formula right. They’ve reinvested in the staff at the farms, added new pulping equipment, rebuilt their cupping lab, established protocols for keeping coffee lots separated until they can be evaluated for quality, planted new shade trees, added new varieties...the list goes on. And it is just the beginning, really. A lot has been done, but success will depend on what happens over the next five to ten years. Recently macadamia was planted as well in order to diversify income. Water resources are scarce and rising fuel prices are getting everyone worried, so Neel and Kavita have been working to design an efficient system for drip irrigation and have been purchasing manure from a local Masai community to use as fertilizer and reduce reliance on synthetic inputs.

There are of course still plenty of challenges ahead. They’ve got to make the quality formula work on a larger scale if they are to succeed. Drought is still an ever-present threat. The politics within the domestic coffee industry still cry out for reform. And then there are the elephants…these are the only farms I’ve been to in the world where the biggest source of worry is not fungus or insect damage but invasion during the night by marauding herds of elephants, buffalo, and even lions! They pass through from time to time looking for water, and elephants will actually locate underground pipes and dig them up with their tusks. When they walk through the farm they trample everything in their path, leaving a big swath of razed land. Amazing. And you thought rabbits in your garden were destructive.