[123] Rwanda - Shyira Nzinza FW [CROP 25/26 ARCHIVE]

"A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet."

Nzinza, meaning "good" in Kinyarwandan, is a Colombian variety grown at Shyira as part of Raw Material's variety garden project. Originally developed to combine cup quality with disease resistance, it's taken exceptionally well to the altitude at Shyira.

We're absolute suckers for varieties and cultivars grown outside their usual locales, finding it a fascinating insight into what the interaction of genetics and environment can produce. 
When we cupped through the variety garden samples, this one cleared the field, and with only 30kg of green coffee representing the entire Nzinza harvest, we've reserved fully half this lot for our online store - and we don't expect it to last long.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: We found this coffee wanted a roast profile that was somewhere between the two locales - shorter than our typical washed Colombian profile, but marginally longer than our typical Rwandan. Kept the end temperature down to maximise florality and acidity.

Best Rested: 4-5 weeks

Filter: 60g/L, 96°C when fresh but when well rested you can go down to 92-93°C 

Espresso: 18g/48g/20-22s. Brilliant turbo/soup.

We’re tasting: Tropical aromas of fresh lychee and guava, with a hint of jam tart. In the cup there's a super nice bright acidity, reminding us of blackcurrant cordial, lime glucose sweets, and guava juice, with some chamomile florals. There's a richness backing it up - butter biscuit, ripe solliès fig, and dates. As it cools we find an interesting warm spiced herbaceousness, reminding us of malabathrum alongside a malic poached rhubarb note.

Traceability

The Story

The Shyira washing station produces what we consider to be some of the best coffees coming out of Rwanda - extremely high altitude farms and precise processing combine to produce superlative results.
Raw Material and Muraho have always been troublemakers in Rwandan coffee. The Rwandan government put in a huge effort to promote speciality production in the country - setting strict legal rules on how coffee could be processed and what could be grown. Having set these rules in a time when naturals were oft seen as less good, and commercial coffee [still to this day] punished any sort of fruity "unwashed" flavours, the rules of the game were set: Rwandan coffee would be red bourbon, and fully washed. This also allowed a reduction in potato defect, as it's easier to sort out during the wet parchment phase post pulping.
To their credit, with a big push from the government's post-genocide reconstruction efforts and international development agencies like PEARL (who invested heavily in washing station infrastructure and quality-focused wet processing), the excellent reputation of Rwandan coffee came into being, and we now very much take it for granted.

Raw Material were troublemakers because they produced and exported some of the first Honey & Natural process coffees from the country (back in 2016). Requiring committed buyers and approval by NAEB (the National Agricultural Export Development Board), these lots fetched a much higher price due to both being excellent and rare. With the spread of natural processing at their other stations, committed buyers, and these lots fetching higher export prices, combined with consistent international buyer demand - NAEB relented, and now the production of naturals and honeys is legally allowed without requiring extra hoops

But that leaves the variety question - whilst all new plantings have been legally mandated to be red bourbon (with old stock of Mibirizi, Jackson, and Bourbon Mayaguez also making up part of the production), this has left Rwanda behind the curve on the potential of new varieties - both in cup profile, value, but also rust & CBD (coffee berry disease resilience)
With the El Fenix variety garden well established in Colombia, with plenty of access to genetic material, just like the establishment of international knowledge transfer like the anoxic water pillow technique, there was "an exchange of genetics". The less said the better ;) ;)

Several years later, the Shyira variety garden is productive and it turns out, some of these Colombian varieties take EXTREMELY well to the conditions found in Rwanda, and specifically the conditions at Shyira with the exceptional altitude.