26/07/2026
In 1962 a government geologist surveyed the Kericho area. Coffee gets one sentence in the whole report. Tea, he wrote, was the future.
He was right about the tea. The rest reads like a case for coffee.
He describes a high lava plateau between 5,000 and 8,000 feet, "strikingly verdant". He can barely find rock to study, because "the plateau highlands and the forested areas carry a thick soil cover". And he records the area competing for "the greatest annual rainfall in Kenya": a dry January, then over five inches every month after, peaking near twelve in April, May and again in August.
A dry season to trigger flowering, two wet peaks to carry the cherries. He was describing a coffee region without knowing it.
Sixty-four years on, coffee is spreading fast across Kericho, and the county is handing out seedlings by the hundred thousand.
Our Kenya Orange Co-Ferment comes from that ground at around 1,800 metres, produced by Lot 20: certified as both a cooperative and an exporter, paying farmers on cherry delivery rather than months later. Fermented anaerobically with orange and koji, and the oranges come from the same farmers who supply the cherries.
Sweet and orange-led, dark chocolate and pecan underneath, heavy velvety body. Cupped at 86.
Available now.
