With this beautiful Rwandan lot from Janja Hill, we welcome in our second coffee from the famed Baho collective, having previously featured a coffee from Akanyaru Hill. As with our previous Rwandan release, you can expect an abundance of the characteristics that make the best Rwandan coffees shine, namely a high degree of blackberry-forward sweetness, the round, stable acidity and juiciness of pomegranate, and the refined, refreshing, and clean finish of green tea—especially as it cools. This lot is the result of the contribution of a handful of smallholder farms centered immediately around the Janja Hill community in Rwanda’s Northern Province, about a two-hour drive north of Kigali. All of this lot’s contributing farms are located at or above 1900 masl, and each component that went into it was processed at Muzo washing station—one of Baho Coffe’s smallest and most quality-driven station. Although only about eighteen thousand kilos of specialty-grade coffee is processed at Muzo station annually—placing it definitively on the very low end of production volume—this results in a greater degree of consistency and quality control of the lots that go through the station. Bourbon is one of the most ubiquitous and well-known varietals of C. arabica, particularly in South America. It is characterized by its high quality potential at altitude, plant height, lower production yield, and susceptibility to major coffee diseases. Bourbon was first introduced to Bourbon Island—now La Réunion—from Yemen by French missionaries in the early 18th century. It wasn’t until the mid 19th century that Bourbon proliferated beyond Bourbon Island, when it was brought by missionaries to Africa and the Americas. Bourbon was first planted in Brazil in the 1860’s, after which it spread rapidly north and west into other regions of South and Central America, where it remains common and popular today. Red bourbon owes its color to a dominant genetic trait, compared to yellow bourbon’s recessive trait. The sugar present in red bourbon, like pink bourbon, is predominantly glucose, resulting in a more smooth, silk-like body.