Uganda: Kigezi Valley | Limited Reserve

Roast Level: Light-Medium
Tasting Notes: Strawberry, Lemon, Lavender, Jam
Origin: Kigezi, South Western Uganda
Elevation: 2000-2200 MASL
Varietals: Nyasaland
Process: Minimal Intervention Natural, Dried Beds

Uganda is best known for Robusta, which grows wild there and still makes up the vast majority of the country’s coffee exports. Great Arabica is much less common and tends to come from a handful of high-elevation regions, including the Kigezi Highlands in southwestern Uganda. Kigezi sits high, cool, and mountainous, with elevations across the region ranging from roughly 1,500 to 2,700 meters—exactly the kind of environment where Arabica can thrive.

This lot comes from about 300 smallholder farmers working with Kigezi Valley Coffee and Mountain Harvest. Mountain Harvest began working in Kigezi in 2023, bringing the farmer training, centralized processing, quality control, and market support they had already developed in other parts of Uganda. It’s a small program, but that’s part of what makes this coffee interesting: Kigezi is still an emerging specialty-coffee region, not one of the country’s most established names.

The coffee is processed as a minimal intervention natural, which means the ripe coffee cherries are dried whole rather than having the fruit removed first. After sorting, the cherries are spread on raised screen beds, rotated and monitored as they dry, then moved to temperature-controlled storage to rest and stabilize for two months. The process is simple on paper, but careful drying is what allows all of that fruit character to come through cleanly in the cup.

We were looking for something new for the pour-over side of our tasting room. Something that would feel noticeably different from the coffees already on our shelves. This Uganda checked that box pretty quickly.

The natural process, high-elevation growing region, and combination of strawberry, lemon, lavender, and jam gave us exactly what we wanted: a cup with enough personality to make slowing down for a pour-over worthwhile. It’s bright, a little floral, plenty fruity, and not quite like anything else we’re pouring right now.

Sometimes that’s the whole story. A coffee doesn’t need a dramatic backstory to earn a spot . . it just needs to give us a reason to keep tasting it.