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How to brew the perfect cup of Kivu noir    Get inside tips from our resident coffee expert, Kevin Mbundu. Kevin is one of Kivu noir’s co-founders and inherited a passion for coffee from his dad. In 2003, Kevin visited a cupping session in London. He was too young to really understand any of it, but the experience was a...

You can learn a lot about a coffee company by looking at the journey its beans take from the field to the filter. Each part is integral to the process, with the potential for making a difference – both to those who are involved in the production and the coffee lovers at the end of the line. That’s something we...

  From the corners of Vietnam to the shores of New York City, coffee is one of the most widely spread and loved beverages. Whether you’re a fan of a dark, strong espresso shot or a milky latte with plenty of foam, you are part of a longstanding history of bean and brew.    But if you’re wondering why some...

Kivu noir is of the famed Red Bourbon Arabica variety and is grown in rich volcanic soils at high altitudes over 4,800 ft. above sea level, on the rolling hills around Nkora, along the western shores of Lake Kivu. Rwanda is known worldwide for its fine coffees – a product of rich soils, high altitudes, plentiful equatorial sunshine, and rainfall...

When most people think of Rwanda, they immediately think of the horrific genocide that took place over 24 years ago, and that left 1,000,000 people dead. Though the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi is a big part of the nation’s history, there is perhaps an even bigger part that is rewriting its future – the Rwandan coffee industry. Rwanda’s coffee...

The ripe coffee cherries are picked from the trees by hand, mostly by women and then delivered to our washing station at Nkora. This is usually done in baskets carried on their heads and occasionally on bicycles. At the washing station, the cherries are carefully sorted by hand to make sure that only the red cherries are accepted. They are...