Yemeni coffee... drinking history

Yemeni coffee... drinking history

Coffee from Yemen...

The most expensive single cup of pour over coffee I've ever purchased was consumed in New York City at Blue Bottle eight years ago.  It was a Yemeni coffee from Port of Mokha which was served with a cookie baked specifically to match the flavour profile of the pour over (cherry, plums, almonds) and accompanied by an information pamphlet (sadly I no longer have that).  There was an insane back story to the coffee as well.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali (now referred to as the Monk of Mokha in the coffee industry) retraced coffee to his family's country of origin, Yemen.  He lived with local coffee farmers to help process the coffee beans and undertook to find markets for the coffee.  When civil war erupted in 2014 and cut off air travel, Mokhtar escaped via dinghy along with two prized suitcases of Yemeni coffee.

In the 1700s, Yemen was the supplier of all of the world's coffee.  Eventually the Dutch, French and British East India Companies smuggled beans out of Yemen and planted them in colonial countries.  The island of Java, controlled by the Dutch East India Trading Company, became the most important port for Indonesian coffee and the blend of Mokha (coffee moving through the most important Yemeni Red Sea port city) and Java was a natural one.

Yemeni coffee has a unique rustic, earthy, chocolatey and spicy flavour, I get hints of apricot which I don't see in any other coffee.  When blended with Indonesian coffee processed using the Giling Basah method, a wildly exotic and textured experience results.

Given that civil war has been ongoing for the past decade, it's rare to see coffee from Yemen.  When some became available I couldn't help myself.

I hope that you'll purchase some of these fascinating coffees, they can be found on our website within a collection called "The Yemen Project".

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