Bright lemon acidity with notes of plum and raspberry, layered with black tea, cola and lingering sugar cane sweetness.
Adumu isn’t one farm. It’s a lot assembled from smallholdings across Kenya’s Central Highlands, the crescent of coffee country wrapped around Mount Kenya and an easy run north of Nairobi. Farms here are small, often a hectare or two, with coffee growing alongside bananas, avocados and whatever else the family eats. The soil is the famous stuff: deep, red, volcanic, loaded with minerals. It’s why the same few hillsides grow some of the world’s best coffee and some of its best tea.
Altitude does the rest. Between 1,550 and 2,000 metres the air stays cool enough to slow cherry ripening right down, and slow ripening is where the density and that mouth-watering acidity come from. Rain arrives in two goes, long rains from March to May and short rains in October and November, which means the trees flower twice and the region harvests twice.
Processing is textbook Kenyan and completely unforgiving. Cherries are hand-picked at full ripeness and delivered to the wet mill the same day, then sorted, pulped, fermented and washed under close supervision before going out onto raised beds to dry slowly in the sun. Someone turns them by hand. Someone shades them through the worst of the midday heat. Only later, at the dry mill, is the coffee graded by screen size, with AB catching screens 15 and 16 and making up something like 40% of the national crop. Smaller than AA. Every bit as good in the cup.
In the trees you’ll find SL28 and SL34, the Scott Labs selections from the 1930s that built Kenya’s reputation in the first place, alongside Ruiru 11 and Batian. Those last two are Kenya’s own answer to leaf rust and coffee berry disease, bred at Ruiru to keep farms productive without giving up the cup. Batian is named after Mount Kenya’s highest peak, which feels about right.
- Country: Kenya
- Region: Central Highlands (Mount Kenya)
- Producers: Smallholder farmers delivering to cooperative wet mills
- Varieties: SL28, SL34 (Scott Labs selections); Ruiru 11, Batian (CRI disease-resistant)
- Altitude: 1,550 – 2,000 m.a.s.l.
- Processing: Washed
- Grade: AB
- Soil: Red volcanic
- Annual rainfall: 1,200 – 1,800 mm