OISEAUX DE PROIE, Kenya
Boysenberry, Cacao Nib, Hibiscus
| Producer | David Ngibuini |
| Region | Muruguru, Nyeri |
| Varietal | SL28 & SL34 |
| Processing | Supernatural |
| Altitude | 1,789 MASL |
Nyeri is the hard heart of Kenyan coffee. On the foothills of Mount Kenya the ground runs deep red, heavy with iron and volcanic mineral, and the nights fall cold enough to hold the cherry back and drive its structure inward.
In Muruguru, David Ngibuini works Maguta Estate, five acres he took over from his mother and brought back from ruin. It has since become the centre of a growing cluster of smallholders who carry their cherry to his mill by hand, off the same red soil.
The trees are SL28 and SL34, the selections Scott Agricultural Laboratories drew out of the Kenyan highlands in the 1930s and the backbone of everything this country is known for. Bred for drought and built for the cup, they carry the weight and severity that mark Kenyan coffee at its most exacting. At 1,789 metres they answer with density.
What sets this lot apart is the Supernatural. Ngibuini has spent years refining a natural process that keeps the fruit whole against the seed and draws the sugars in slow and controlled. This is not the clean washed road Kenya built its name on. It is darker and denser, the fruit pushed to its edge while the varietal's structure holds underneath. A process bent to the will of the man who made it.
