Williams & Johnson are Leith based coffee roasters who also have a cool café on the Shore, Edinburgh
Origin: Tanzania, Songwe, Mbozi District
Varietal; Bourbon, Kent, N39
Processing: Fully washed
Altitude: 1,600 to 1,671 metres above sea level
Owner: Iyenga AMCOS cooperative. 292 members
Tasting Notes: Peach, milk chocolate, marzipan & cherry
Kenya’s less well-known neighbour produces an astoundingly similar-tasting coffee in a somewhat similar landscape. Arabica seedlings were first introduced to Tanzania from Réunion Island (then known as Bourbon) and planted in the Bayamoyo and Mogoro regions (fairly close to Dar Es Salaam) and were later established as a successful commercial crop in 1893 on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro by German colonizers.
The Songwe region, rich in agricultural production, is situated in southern Tanzania bordering Zambia and Malawi. This is the location of the Mbozi District, populated with 175 villages and around 515,000 people. One of these villages is the Iyenga village, which was originally a part of the Itumpi village, but the villagers found it difficult to access government resources due to distance, and thus created their own village in 1974. The government also established a hospital and school within the community to provide the villages with essential resources. This is also the location of the Iyenga Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Society (AMCOS), which was created in 2003 under the Tanzanian Cooperative Act. Today, the AMCOS has 292 members, with 34 women and 258 men.