Kenya Nyeri: Featured Origin Select Coffee

Each month I get the pleasure of choosing a new single origin coffee to purchase and roast for our Origin Select project. While we always carry a standard selection of single origins representing some of our favorite growing regions, this gives us the opportunity to highlight some exceptional beans on a seasonal basis that we might otherwise have missed out on!

Our Origin Select coffee this month comes fromNyeri, situated about 150 km north of Kenya's capital Nairobi, in the country'sdensely populated and fertile Central Highlands. The coffee we carefully selected represents a classic, hardworking Kenyan profile: Sweet fruit balanced by complex savory herbs, and a creamy body. Our roasters chose a traditional light roast to bring out the best in this regional select bean.

The majority of Nyeri residents are members of Kenya's largest ethnic group, the Kikuyu, with residents generally being known as "Nyeri Kikuyu". The Kikuyu language is widely spoken, along with Kenya's National language, Swahili as well as Kenya's official language, English. 

A major industry in Nyeri is farming, which is mostly unmechanized. The city urban area is actually part of the surrounding rural areas of greater Nyeri County, with farms within the municipality blending seamlessly into the rural area. The main cash crops are coffee and tea, grown mainly by smallholders who are organized into quasi-private state-supported and supervised co-operatives or companies for farm input distribution, basic processing and marketing purposes.