Gito FW - Rwanda

Traditional Washed, Red Bourbon (SC 13/14), Light-Medium Roaster Influence - House Filter Omni, great on batch or a more trad guest espresso

"When you do buying work in the field at origin, cup all the grades" - some wise words once given to us by one of our old green coffee mentors, many years ago. They started the bones of the Gito project: In Rwanda, coffees are density sorted multiple times at the washing station, then again at the dry mill before being screen sized (sorting beans by size). Due to the legal mandates to improve the reputation of Rwandan coffee as well as the perception for quality, only the larger screen size lots would be exported, with the smaller screen sizes being sold on the internal market for a fraction of the price.

The rub - and what you find when you cup all the grades - is that these SC 13/14 beans are excellent - just as good as the rest of the station output. At about 50% peaberry content you could almost market it as that alone. By taking the undersized output of the MTC stations, seperated during dry milling and thenb preparing them to an export level of colour sorting - the Gito (meaning small) project delivers a significantly higher return of value to the producers, and it's very tasty. We're on our third season of buying Gito now and it always continues to deliver.

Having bought for Facility, last season we flagged that it absolutely could hold its own as a house filter or single origin release; whilst we have the Natural lot in Facility V13, we're making a start on the Washed as our next house filter - after a run of natty numbers on house batch, it's good to return to something more clean.

We're tasting:
Aromas of marmalade, dark fruits and toffee. In the cup it's buttery bodied and very sweet, with distinct notes of plum crumble, stewed apple and milk chocolate. As it cools the sugary notes evolve to fruity muscovado.