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Burundi coffee bears striking resemblence to neighboring Rwanda, in both cup character, but also the culture surrounding coffee. Burundi is a small landlocked country at the crossroads of East and Central Africa, straddling the crest of Nile-Congo watershed. Sandwiched between Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, Burundi has beautiful Lake Tanganyika for much of its western border. This is a country dominated by hills and mountains, with considerable altitude variation, from the lowest point at 772 meters (Lake Tanganyika)to the top of Mount Heha at 2670 MASL.

The first arabica coffee tree in Burundi was introduced by the Belgians in the early 1930s and has been growing in the country ever since. Coffee cultivation is an entirely small holder based activity with over 800.000 families directly involved in coffee farming with a total acreage of 60.000 hectares in the whole country with about 25 millions of coffee tree.

Burundi's coffee, like Rwanda's, is primarily Bourbon varietal, grown at high altitudes ranging from 1250 to 2000 MASL. Like Rwanda, coffee is planted by smallholder farmers; each farmer is tending abount 50 to 250 trees. Historically, the coffee was sold as bulked "Ngoma Mild" coffee (an Ngoma is a traditional drum). The farmers bring coffee to washing stations (wet-mills) and theses are organized into "SOGESTAL" management groups, each with about 30 stations in them. Coffee has been sold only by mixing all the stations in the SOGESTAL into one big lot, so spearating qualities was not possible. Several years ago, the coffee market was "liberalized" which means that individual washing stations can keep the coffee separate, and it can be marketed to buyers by station, and by "day lots", the harvest for a short period of time. With this comes the new possibility to find the gems of Burundi coffee that were formerly mixed in with the not-so-good lots. So new possibilities are emerging in Burundi, and it is a coffee to watch! - Tom