Presenting with the classic characteristics of a good traditional heirloom varietal, these small dense beans are full of flavour, with a medium body, ripe sweet fruity acidity, and topped off with complex winey notes.
Allow us to share a little bit of history about the importance of Yemen to the world of coffee.
While Ethiopia is known as “ground zero” for coffee where the native (undomesticated) plants were first recorded and can genetically be verified; it was Yemen that is the first nation to cultivate and recorded to actually drink the beverage, and this, as early as the 6th century.
There are more than ten well-known types of coffee beans in Yemen: al-Mutari, al-Harazi, Yafi’i, Al-anasi, Khulani, al-Baha'i, al-Hammadi, al-Tufahi, al-Dawa’iri, and the Odani coffee varietals.
Yemenis exported their beans to the rest of the world through the port of Mocha, (a word that is now synonymous with a coffee chocolate combination), and originally exported to Persia, Egypt, Syria, and Turkey, gradually expanding to as many as 70 countries.
The most reliable evidence of early knowledge of the coffee tree and coffee consumption appears in the mid-15th century in the Sufi monasteries in Yemen, south of the Arabian Peninsula.