Situated on the eastern slopes of Mount Kenya, one of the most fertile and best-watered parts of Africa is home to coffee, tea and dairy farming. Deman Estate is situated right there. We visited the farm in the fall of 2022 and got to meet Mutai Kinyua, a charismatic coffee producer, always up for a joke. He and his family live in Nairobi, though he spends a lot of his time on the farm in Meru, too. Since the drive takes between 3.5 and 7 hours – depending on traffic, he usually stays for a couple of days at a time. While he’s not around, one of the employees, who lives on the farm, is in charge. He has a team of about ten people who work at the farm almost throughout the year, most of whom are women who live in the region.

Like many others we met, who work in the Kenyan coffee industry, Mutai mentioned more than once that he sees more and more differences with the harvest from one year to another due to climate change. In some years, the harvest begins later or it’s much smaller than anticipated. Whilst a few years ago there was still a main crop in late spring and early summer, followed by a small fly crop in the fall, it is changing much more these days. This is a big challenge for exporters and importers, too, and makes it impossible at times to export the same coffees at the same time every year. This issue is not exclusive to Kenya, but known in pretty much every country that grows coffee.

Deman Estate is a rather small farm. Mutai has a second plot of land nearby, where he grows coffee as well, which is processed along with the coffee from Deman Estate. In the past, Mutai cultivated coffee plants of the various SL varieties known for their high quality. Since they are also very susceptible to diseases – which happen to be more of an issue due to climate change, he decided a few years ago to switch to the cultivars Ruiru 11 and Batian, which were developed in Kenya. After all, plants of the SL varieties don’t produce high-quality coffee when they are diseased.

Another reason for it is that Mutai wants to use as little chemicals as possible. The fertilizer used is organic and consists, to a large extent, of the coffee pulp and parchment. This is combined with an organic fertilized made in neighboring Tanzania. There are added to the soil, which is a specific combination of sand and dirt. Mutai mostly refrains from using pesticides and fungicides and instead uses natural techniques. Only when things get really bad and his plants are in danger he buys organic pestidices or fungicides from a specialized dealer in Nairobi.

As is usually the case in Kenya, coffee on Deman Estate used to be processed with the washed process. Vava and Mutai maintain a regular exchange and once day, Vava suggested he might want to dry the natural process with a small portion of his coffee. Mutai, being very open-minded and eager to try out new things, he gave it a shot in close collaboration with Vava. The first attempts very already very promising and he managed to further improved the process since. Yet, he continues to experiment – most recently with various types of carbonic maceration: After harvesting, he puts the coffee cherries into a sealed tank for 2-3 days, wherein an anaerobic fermentation takes place. A coffee processed this way at Deman Estate might end up in our offer next year.

When purchasing coffee from Kenya, Vava Coffee, a certified B Corp founded by Vava Angwenyi in 2008, is usually our partner of choice. We also purchased this coffee through Vava. The social enterprise is committed to contributing to better future prospects for both local communities and the coffee industry as a whole. Vava Coffee’s vision is to challenge the status quo and promote positive social and economic disruption within the coffee industry. Thanks to Vava's passion, many coffee farmers are able to earn their income in a sustainable way.

In the scope of the organization Gente del Futuro, Vava runs a coffee school on the small island of Lamu off the Kenyan coast. The school allows youths and young adults to participate in various SCA courses and obtain internationally recognized certifications, while also receiving additional training. In the fall of 2022, the school has also opened its own café named «La Dulce Toro», where the students can put into action what they learned, whilst being supported by experienced coffee professionals. There's a beautiful video, which offers some impressions of La Dulce Toro. Participation at the school is free and available to a limited number of participants. It is funded through contributions to Gente del Futuro, which we also support financially with part of the money collected through both our customers' contributions via our online store as well as the percentage of our annual revenues.

We roast the coffee from Deman Estate with filter brewing in mind. The result is a complex coffee with notes of rhubarb, a refreshing, lime-like acidity and a rich plum flavor. On top of this, we find berry notes, mostly raspberry and blueberry. It is hard to pin it down to one specific word, but what's sure is that this coffee is crisp and juicy.