Farms: Boyce Harries With Real Talk : Chania Estate's Coffee

WOLFF WEEKLY VLOGG 00 | Boyce Harries With Real Talk : Chania Estate's Coffee My name is Boyce Harries and I am here at Wolff Roast House in Brisbane, Australia, an unusual place for me, because I’m a Kenyan coffee farmer. Why am I here? Well, I’m here because Wolff Coffee Roasters, through Cafe Imports, have bought some of my coffee and I have been given the very fortunate opportunity to follow my coffee from origin to roast house. I’ve had a wonderful week here in Australia, hosted by Peter and Penny Wolff, the owners of the Wolff Roast House and I’ve been able to watch my coffee be roasted. I’ve had the opportunity to interact with people who drink Wolff Roaster’s coffee and that obviously includes my own coffee and I’ve had the opportunity to understand a little bit about some of the work that goes into preparing roasting, but also actually barista work involved in making a cup of coffee. What I’ve learnt is that it is as complex at the beginning as it is at the end. This year, as I’ve mentioned, we supplied coffee to Wolff Roasters, through Cafe Imports, and we were able to provide Cafe Imports and Wolff Roasters a single varietal option, processed three different ways. This was done on Chania Estate, our farm in Kenya, East Africa. We are a family owned and operated farm that has been operating on the same property since 1926. French Mission is one of the oldest varieties that you will find in East Africa and the trees on Chania Estate were planted some before 1926 and some a little bit after. So we have very old trees that still operate, produce very good coffee on the farm. This heirloom variety we have been able to separate because we have 100 of 180 acres planted with French Mission. We harvest this entirely separately and put this through our factory separately. We started many years ago with Cafe Imports, offering a single varietal fully washed option and with the support of Cafe Imports we then introduced a natural process. Over the last two years - eighteen months, we have been looking at processing in the honey processing method and this is still in the early developmental stages but between Wolff Coffee Roasters, Cafe Imports and ourselves, we decided to have a go at this. From a farmer’s perspective, it’s wonderful to have not just the green buyer but also the roaster’s support to experiment and to look at innovation. Too often a grower might decide to experiment, but without the support of it’s market this obviously can be a very big financial risk and also reputational one if the market doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. Chania Estate’s options then available at Wolff Coffee Roasters involves a naturally processed coffee, a honey processed coffee and a fully washed processed coffee, all of the same single varietal, French Mission.