Tanzania Karatu Vohora Family Natural SL-28

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Tanzania Karatu Vohora Family Natural SL-28 2024 

Flavor Profile: Blueberry, strawberry cheesecake, ripe cantaloupe, and dark chocolate

Overview:

This is a traditional natural SL-28 cultivar coffee from Karatu, Tanzania, produced by the Vohora family on their farm Finagro, located on the Ngorongoro caldera.  The flavor profile is layered and fruit forward with notes of blueberry, strawberry cheesecake, ripe cantaloupe, and dark chocolate. 

Taste:

We were lucky to get our hands on an impressive display of cultivar type and processing method executed by the Vohora family from Tanzania. A family business since the 70’s, they have had the experience and time to hone on processing techniques designed for cultivar type, a lengthy and extensive process. Dedication has paid off, and we are thrilled to showcase their work from this SL-28 cultivar type.  

We tasted strawberries galore in the form of strawberry cheesecake, jam, shortcake – the works. The fruit is amped up while still being clean. This combination is reminiscent of the pinnacle of gateway naturals of the late aughts, the flavors are enough to make anyone a natural convert.  

You’ll discover layers of peach, blueberry, cane sugar, ginger, ripe cantaloupe and lemon curd. Obviously fruit forward, it still has a multifaceted quality that keeps you going back for more.  

My favorite form of this coffee is seeing it on espresso; a fruity cortado is my ideal weekend drink. The flavors translate well to any brewing form. From pour-over, drip, espresso, cold brew or even a fruity dark roast (yum) you’ll have endless options for your menu.  

Source: 

Under the watchful guidance of sibling team Neel and Kavita Vohora, the Edelweiss and Finagro farms have begun to blossom from well-managed estate farms, spanning 1000 acres across multiple ridges of the Ngorongoro caldera in northern Tanzania, into an innovative and genre-defying coffee enterprise. I’ve worked with Neel and Kavita, and the coffees from the farms for nearly 15 years and I can definitively say that their most recent harvest is the most exciting I’ve ever tasted.    

Among the family’s favorite cultivar selections are the SL-28s, coffees descended from some of the earliest Arabica selections made in Africa outside of Ethiopia. Tanzania was among the first colonial coffee cultivated on the continent – Bourbon trees from Réunion were delivered to the Bagomoyo mission as early as 1868. From this expanding population of C. arabica var. Bourbon a selection was made in the early 1930s by a now-extinct British agricultural breeder called Scott Labs. SL-28 is Tanzanian stock, chosen for its drought resilience almost 100 years ago, and it found its home primarily in Kenya (where the lab was based) and earned a reputation with growers for bountiful harvests and large screen sizes and with cuppers as a bastion of cup quality. The Vohora’s SL-28s thrive on the farms as productive trees (if susceptible to diseases like berry fungus), and frequently top the siblings’ cup rankings in their lab. 

Vohora’s farms continue to innovate in processing methodology as well. Rather than resting on the laurels of tradition, nearly all of their coffee (including the commercial volumes of larger lots) goes through a cherry maceration period prior to processing. For microlots, like this SL-28, the timeframe for whole cherry “pre-fermentation” is determined specifically by cultivar, through a trial-and-error process that’s been honed into precise protocols to bring out the best in each variety. In this case, the SL-28 harvest will macerate in whole cherry on raised beds under protective tarps for a few days prior completing the 2-3 week drying process on raised beds in whole cherry. After this is finished, the dried coffee is stored in GrainPro until it can be milled in Vohora’s facility back in Arusha.  

Ngorongoro, the world’s largest unbroken caldera, looms over a verdant landscape, the shell of an ancient, ruptured volcano. Inside its walls, a wildlife conservation area cut off from much access to the outside world, is home to hordes of zebra, eland, gazelles, wildebeests, two prides of lions, hyenas, hippopotami, and scores of other local birds and mammals, including a small population of black rhino. The Maasai, among the region’s more visible residents with distinctive red flannel robes and unchanged traditions of nomadism, are frequent visitors, passing through the crater with their goat and cattle herds in tow. The caldera’s wildlife are no strangers to the farms, either. Native forest corridors on the estates allow freedom of movement for the animals as they migrate, but it’s fairly common to find damage to the coffee trees; the most frequent offenders being elephants and water buffalo.  

The Vohora’s estates are nestled into the caldera’s outer ridges, bordering the park. Since 1971, the Vohoras have owned about 1000 acres of farmland on the southern exterior slopes near the town of Karatu. Neel’s grandfather arrived from India, first working for the British colonists as a farm manager prior to the nation’s independence. Neel’s father, Ajai, heads the export business from nearby Nairobi, and Kavita runs the milling and sampling operations back in Arusha.