This People’s Farm (PF) Lot from Murundo Coffee Washing Station (CWS) exhibits some of the best of the west, Rwanda’s mountainous borderlands with the breathtaking Lake Kivu. On the cupping table the coffee is gentle, mild-mannered, and very sweet. It has a soft apricot character that readily shines through strong impressions of salted caramel and hints of lemongrass. The Murundo Coffee Washing Station (CWS) is one of two processing sites the Kivubelt company operates. “PF” in Kivubelt’s nomenclature refers to “People Farm”, another term for smallholder coffee growers and the households they support. Kivubelt was established in 2011 by Furaha Umwizeye, after returning to Rwanda with a master’s degree in economics from Switzerland. Born and raised in Rwanda, Umwizeye’s goal with Kivubelt is to create a model coffee plantation, as sustainable in agriculture as it is impactful in local employment and empowerment. The company began with 200 scattered acres of farmland in Gihombo, a community in Rwanda’s coffee-famous Nyamasheke district that runs along the breathtaking central shoreline of Lake Kivu. Under Umwizey’s leadership, Kivubelt has planted 90,000 coffee trees on their estates, which now employ more than 400 people during harvest months and is a kind of coffee vocational school for local smallholders interested in improving their farming. Kivubelt has also acquired two washing stations, Murundo and Jarama, which combined not only process coffee from the company’s estates, but also that of more than 500 smallholders in the region, offering quality premiums and training programs for participating farming families. Lot 1 from Murundo CWS was picked across March, April, and May 2022 by the station’s participating 400 local smallholders.