About This Coffee
Marselina is a coffee connoisseur who inherited a coffee plantation in Wajamla, Bajawa from her parents. Marselina is Bena, a society with a matrilineal culture. This means that that kinship and inheritance flows through the female line. The Bena are matrilineal but not matriarchal. Men still hold many of the positions of power in Bena society and men have the power to choose their wives.
Understanding Bena culture is important to understanding Marselina’s experiences. While she is fortunate to inherit her parents’ land, the Bena—like most Western cultures—do not traditionally view women as experts, leaders or professionals.
Despite Marselina’s accolades as successful Q-grader, community leader, coffee farmer and quality control manager for us, people often doubt her capabilities. That only inspires her even more in her efforts to create change. Marselina seeks to redefine stereotypes that insist that women cannot be farmers, leaders or experts. She aims to empower other women in leadership positions and help put Flores on the specialty coffee map.
Marselina formed Kagho Masa Cooperative in 2014 in her village Doka in Golewa subdistrict in Ngada on Flores. Women occupy all positions of leadership and comprise a majority of the membership in the cooperative.
In addition to leading Kagho Masa Cooperative, Marselina is the local quality manager for all of our Flores project coffees. We helped Marselina get a sample roaster, moisture meter and calibration with our QC team. We also purchased plastic sheeting in bulk. Marselina and the local community did the rest.
Together, they built communal parabolic solar drying houses for processing. Each harvest season, Marselina oversees the collection of wet parchment from farmers in the neighboring times of Bela, Tolo Roja and Mala Tura. In her cupping lab, she evaluates and approves incoming microlots.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After selectively harvesting cherry by hand, each farmer typically pulps, ferments, and washes their own coffee. They deliver their harvest as wet-parchment to the community solar-drying house they built. Marselina and her team oversee the drying and quality analysis before approving the lot for shipment.
Coffee in Indonesia
Indonesia has a long coffee producing history, but recently their coffees have been overlooked by the specialty market. Thanks to our innovative and ever-expanding supply chain, we are proud to bring you high-quality coffees from many of Indonesia’s unique regions, accompanied by in-depth traceability information.
Indonesia is perhaps best known for its unique wet hulling process (giling basah). Though its exact origins are unclear, wet hulling most likely originated in Aceh during the late 1970s.
Wet hulling’s popularity can be attributed to producers’ need for prompt payments. It was also adopted specifically by many producers who lacked the drying infrastructure that was needed to shelter drying parchment from the high humidity and inconsistent rainfall typical in Sumatra. At higher elevations with constant humidity and unpredictable rainfall, drying can prove to be slow, risky and difficult.