About This Coffee
This lot is produced by the 10 members of the Myay Ni Kone Specialty Coffee Group. The coffee farms are located in Ywangan Township, covering 200 acres of land. The open space around the hilltop is put to good use by growing tea, avocado, and other seasonal crops.
The group’s name is inspired by its surroundings as Myay Ni Kone signifies ‘Red Earth Hill’ or ‘Red Soil Town’. The Coffee Group has been making a name for itself over the last few years as a trustworthy partner for specialty coffee.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
All members of the Myay Ni Kone group are known for their attention to meticulously selecting the red cherries and filtering out any defected beans. The coffee is dried on raised beds for 15 to 20 days. After being stored in the village warehouse, the coffee gets transported to Pyin Oo Lwin where the Mandalay Coffee Group mills and exports the coffee.
Coffee in Myanmar
Though coffee has been grown in Myanmar since 1885, the isolationist policies of the post-independence period had limited coffee growing and processing infrastructure. More recent initiatives have focused on expanding coffee infrastructure and opening the country’s economy through coffee exports.
Coffee started to become a larger focus in Myanmar in the 1980s, when the government partnered with the UN to start a project aimed at replacing illegal poppy production (for opium) with coffee trees.
The focus on coffee grew in 2015 when a partnership project with Winrock International and the Coffee Quality Institute sought to address one of the biggest challenges Myanmar’s coffee industry faces. By helping farmers begin more intensive sorting and grading, the project helped farmers achieve higher quality coffee and to sell on the specialty market.
We have witnessed the incredible potential of coffee in Myanmar. In just a few years’ time, coffee scores jumped from the low-70s to the mid-80s. With such quick improvements, imagine what another 5 to 10 years of educational outreach and improving supply chains with could do.