BURUNDI YANDARO HONEY - FILTER

ORIGIN : BURUNDI

REGION : KAYANZA

FARM / PRODUCER : YANDARO WASHING STATION

ALTITUDE : 1800 M

VARIETY : RED BOURBON

PROCESSING : HONEY

In the highlands of northern Burundi, close to the border with Rwanda, Yandaro Washing Station brings together the harvests of more than 2,300 smallholder coffee farmers. The station sits at 1,774 metres in the valley of the Yandaro River, with the coffee farms surrounding it reaching approximately 1,800 metres above sea level. Nearby lies the Kibira rainforest, part of the mountainous landscape that makes this corner of Kayanza particularly well suited to coffee cultivation.

Coffee production here happens on an extraordinarily small scale. The farmers supplying Yandaro cultivate an average of only around 350 coffee trees, usually alongside food crops that support their families. This makes the washing station an essential part of the coffee’s identity: rather than representing a single estate, Yandaro brings together cherries from many tiny farms and provides the infrastructure and expertise needed to sort, process and dry them.

Yandaro was established in the mid-1980s and today works with Greenco, which supports producers and washing stations throughout Kayanza with agronomy, quality control and processing expertise. The station has developed a strong reputation for coffees that combine the characteristic fruit and lively acidity of Burundi with exceptional sweetness.

What makes this particular Yandaro lot especially interesting is the processing. Burundi is much better known for fully washed coffees, while honey processing remains relatively uncommon. For a honey coffee, ripe cherries are depulped while leaving part of the fruit’s sticky mucilage around the seed. The coffee is then dried on raised beds, where careful and regular turning helps control fermentation and encourages even drying. Yandaro’s honey lots are described as particularly juicy, with stone-fruit character and pronounced sweetness.

At the heart of the lot is Red Bourbon, the variety most closely associated with Burundi’s specialty-coffee identity. Grown at high elevation and combined with the honey process, it produces a different expression from the more familiar washed Burundis: rounder sweetness, ripe fruit and a fuller, softer character while retaining the bright, elegant acidity that makes coffees from Kayanza so distinctive.

It’s a coffee that tells the story of Burundi particularly well—not through a single famous farm or producer, but through thousands of small gardens, one washing station and a shared pursuit of quality.