Burundi – Murango

Burundi – Murango

Murango is a small washing station located in the province of Muyinga in the North Eastern corner of Burundi. It was bought back from the government in 2012 by the all-female owned Kalico Cooperative. At Murago individual coffee lots are processed separately using 9 different fermentation tanks. This method keeps the lots apart until they have been dried and cupped for quality. The lower scoring lots are blended and sold as standard commercial coffee and the best are kept separate for sale as microlots. Our batch comes from the peak of the harvest and is amongst the highest scoring lots from this washing station.

Murango have a comprehensive policy in place for the management of their farm with respect to fertilizers and sprays. With a preference for natural products they return all the coffee cherries to the trees as an organic fertilizer and use sprays to control pests and disease in limited amounts and only when absolutely necessary.

Muyinga is little known as a coffee growing region in Burundi, standing in the shaddow of it’s more famous neighbour, Kayanza. Coffee profiles are very similar however and feature beautiful complex florals, intense natural sweetness and a delicate but refined body.

Burundi is by nature a very small country. The districts don’t vary a great deal in climate, geography or coffee profile such as we see in countries like Colombia. Likewise, the geographical distances are relatively small.  As a country Burundi continues to face immense social and political difficulties. One of the challenges for the coffee sector is the government’s involvement as an owner and operator of many coffee washing stations. This makes visibility and transparency very questionable and is why we have chosen to work with one one of the very few privately owned washing stations that are working hard to improve coffee quality and demonstrate the potential that Burundi has to offer.