Nyeri’s coffees are highly coveted for their exceptional quality, so much so that a recent governor attempted to seize all control of the district’s exports. After an unfortunate season where excellent coffee sat in warehouses, abandoned for political posturing, coffee is once again flowing from the district.
This lot was processed at the Gatomboya Factory (the Kenyan term for what is called a washing station, wet mill, or beneficio elsewhere in the world), after harvest on the small family plots of some 600 members of the Barichu Cooperative Society. The typical farmer here counts their trees rather than the size of their land; most average just 250 coffee plants per farm and as a group produce just a single 40,000 pound container of finished green coffee per season.
Gatomboya is a word taken from the local Kikuyu dialect meaning “swamp,” indicating the presence of a water source nearby – indeed, the coffee was fermented and washed in water from the Gatomboya river.