SUMATRA KERINCI HONEY

Medium

Background

Coffee cultivation in Indonesia goes back to the late 1600s to the Dutch
colonial period and has played an essential role in its growth ever since.
Today, over 300 years later, Indonesia ranks among the world‘s largest
coffee producers, cultivating both Arabica and Robusta. The vast majority
of coffee is grown by smallholder farmers with rarely more than 2 hectares
of land. Indonesia consists of around 18,000 islands, of which ten major
islands emerged as coffee-producing regions.

Sumatra‘s westernmost island is crossed by the equator, featuring
landscapes of unparalleled beauty and wildlife as spectacular as one
can imagine. This particular coffee comes from central Sumatra, more
precisely from the region around Kerinci Seblat National Park. The area
is home to a lush tropical rain forest and one of the Sumatran tiger‘s
last strongholds. Mount Kerinci, the country‘s highest volcano with an
elevation of 3,800 meters, dominates the scenery. Once adventurers
climb the summit, they have fantastic views of forested valleys and a
patchwork of verdant farmland. Encircling the mountain, smallholder
farms in the Kerinci highlands benefit from high altitudes and fertile
volcanic soil. Kerinci has obtained a reputation in the specialty coffee
market thanks to the high quality.

For this particular micro-lot, however, the ripe cherries are depulped
and afterwards dried in parchment with a little remainder of mucilage.
This process is known as „honey“. Another difference to the conventional
coffee processing in Sumatra is that instead of the often applied wet-
hulling processes, these beans are dry-hulled.