This is a coffee you wouldn’t usually see in a specialty roaster’s list: Drugar is short for Dried Uganda Arabica. This is a home-dried coffee that normally sells on the internal market in Uganda because it’s not considered worthy of export. Unlike Ethiopia, the internal market in Uganda doesn’t pay particularly well for coffee, so producing exportable coffee creates a massive income difference for farmers.
Our friends Dana, Shak, and Michael at The Coffee Gardens do amazing social work, and they saw an opportunity to raise incomes for farmers by collecting and sorting some of the Drugar, blending it with some of their rejects, and elevating it to exportable quality while paying a premium. It was quite a delicious cup just as they sent it to us, but with the added advantage of our colour sorter to clean it up even further, this coffee becomes truly beautiful. We bought the entire lot of 37 sacks. This is a rare case where the old specialty coffee story of 'helping a farmer improve quality so they make more money' is actually true. This coffee now tastes like rum punch and cherry Kool-Aid: an inflation-beating juice bomb.
The Coffee Gardens was established in 2017 with the goal of producing incredible specialty coffees in an ethical way, offering a transparent and direct link between coffee farmers and coffee consumers. The project was established for many purposes: to improve farmers’ income and livelihoods, create and provide rural employment, promote gender equality, increase transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain, promote and work on environmental protection in the area, and provide training in good agricultural practices.
Elevation: 1400-2300 Metres Above Sea Level
Varietal: SL14, SL28, Nyasaland
Cup Score: 87
Price paid per kilo: £7
Process: Fully natural, home-dried by coffee-growing smallholders
