"Every once in a while, a coffee jumps off the cupping table,” says Scott Angelo, husband-half of the Oceana Coffee company’s husband-wife team of Amy and Scott Angelo, purveyors of some of the best coffees on the planet. “This is one of those coffees. It is truly a treat.”
As Oceana Coffee’s master behind the coffee roaster, longtime coffee enthusiast and Arabica Q Grader, Scott should know. Oceana Coffee’s delicate-bodied Rwanda, Ibisi Mountain makes a fresh, complex cup of coffee full of fruit character, hinting of apricot, floral, black tea, honeyed with a smooth delicate body.
Amy and Scott stumbled across the Ibisi Mountain Hills Washing Station located in Southern Rwanda, a short drive from the Nyunge Forest where the source of the Nile River lies. This coffee washing station is perched some 2,000 meters above sea level and services many of the small highland coffee farms in the region.
It seems the station’s owner, Bernard Uwitije, an area local who with his family had been trading ordinary non- and semi-washed coffees for years, realized the potential for fully washed specialty grade coffee, and built his first fully washed station in 2015, Gitega Hills near Nyamegabe. So successful was Mr. Uwitije at his first fully washed enterprise, he later expanded and opened his second station, Ibisi Mountain Hills, which is where our Oceana Coffee Rwanda, Ibisi Mountain is procured.
“The quality of coffee at both of Mr. Uwitije’s stations continues to be outstanding,” says Amy. “But a cup of Rwandan Ibisi just does it for us.”