Day 5 | Tanzania Gesha Vohora Karatu Blend

This coffee is a blend of two Gesha microlots, one washed and one natural, both grown and processed on the Gaia farm, part of the Finagro Estate in Tanzania. The Finagro Estate is an innovative and genre-defying coffee enterprise run by the sibling team Neel and Kavita Vohora. The estate includes two farms, Edelweiss and Gaia, and spans across multiple ridges of the Ngorongoro caldera in northern Tanzania. A "caldera" is a large, cauldron-like depression formed by a volcano collapsing into its magma chamber after a major eruption.

Ngorongoro is the world’s largest unbroken caldera. Inside its walls is a wildlife conservation area with little access to the outside world. This shell of an ancient volcano is lush and verdant, supporting a wide array of animals and birds including zebras, gazelles, lions, and black rhino. The indigenous Massai people, traditionally nomads, often pass through the crater with their goats and cattle.

The Vohora farms are nestled into the caldera’s outer ridges on its southern slopes near the town of Karutu. The estate borders the wildlife park sharing its rich volcanic soil. The farms were founded in 1971 by Neel and Kavita’s grandfather who came to Tanzania from India many years before. The export arm of the family business was founded by their father in nearby Nairobi.

Today, Neel manages the farms and oversees their over fifty full-time employees and nearly 800 seasonal workers. He is at the forefront of the processing innovations and cultivar selections. Kavita runs the export business, now in Arusha, and is the lead cupper and licensed Q Grader at their dry mill

This coffee comes from newly matured Gesha plants, some with their first exportable harvests this year. The cherries are carefully and selectively harvested when ripe. Neel is hands-on with the processing and continues to innovate new and exciting methods. For microlots, like both of these Geshas, the pre-fermentation process has been carefully formulated through trial and error.

Both the washed and natural lots are macerated in whole cherry on raised beds and under protective tarps for 4 days. After soaking, the washed lot is depulped and moved to a covered tank to ferment for 36-58 hours. The coffee is washed, graded, and dried on raised beds for about 2 weeks. The natural lot is immediately moved to dry in the whole cherry on raised beds for nearly 4 weeks.