Yemen - Wadi Hozan

Constantly beset by challenges beyond their control — from socio-economic upheavals to environmental constraints — Yemen's coffee-farming families persevere in perpetuating their forefathers' agricultural heritage.

The Valley of Hozan or Wadi Hozan, in the Manakha district of West Haraz, is home to 11,000 residents for whom coffee is the primary, if not only, source of livelihood.

Amid the arduous topography, the coffee farming families resiliently tend to coffee trees that thrive across terraces clinging to the steep and arid yet fertile highland terrains. In this area’s specific climatic and agronomic conditions, the coffee cherries grow to capture singularly extraordinary, sweet, and nuanced notes not found elsewhere.

The Haraz region, being at the forefront of Yemeni specialty coffee production, has become known for its peerless landscapes and is endearingly referred to as "the land above the clouds" because of its high elevation amid the Sarat mountain range. Apart from the high altitudes, its location — some 150 km inland from the Red Sea’s primary port of Al-Hudaydah, parallel to the eastern coast of the Red Sea and with the Gulf of Aiden to the south — also contributes to the beneficial conditions for growing coffee with potential for the finest sensory attributes.

Our partner, Mokha not Mocha, strives to bring ease to the Yemeni farmers’ lives through their community-based specialty coffee initiatives.

By astutely switching the Arabic kh in place of ch in naming his company Mokha not Mocha, its founder Abdulrahman Hayek Saeed evokes an inevitable reminiscence of the Arabian heritage of coffee. ­­As a venue for evaluating and processing of coffee cherries, as well as farmer education, the company provides opportunities to continuously improve coffee quality and commercial value, to increase the farming families’ income and better their quality of life.

Typica-Dawairy and Ja’adi are two of the numerous vernacular names used to identify Yemeni coffee varieties unique to the Yemeni terroir. These varieties are commonly associated with coffee trees in the Sana’a Governorate.

Yemeni coffee farmers visually identify Dawairy through its leaves, which tend to be rounded, while Ja’adi by its wavy leaves and cherries are clustered closely together.

For this Wadi Hozan nano-lot, the properly ripe cherries from only 52 farmers were aggregated through Mokha not Mocha’s platform and then put through an anaerobic fermentation process in sealed barrels over a period of 7 to 8 days at cool temperatures of 6 C to 19 C. Following fermentation, the cherries were moved to raised beds for a sun-drying phase that lasted from 20 to 25 days.

Prior to the involvement of civic-minded and specialty coffee-proficient producers like Mokha not Mocha, the Wadi Hozan coffee farmers would have solely relied on a combination of their practical experience and their inherited, pragmatic understanding of how to cultivate, pick, and process the coffee cherries.

Detrimental practices that had been discontinued include indiscriminate picking of coffee cherries regardless of ripeness level and carrying out the crucial post-harvest processing phases of fermentation and drying, as well as storage, in uncontrolled and unsatisfactory environments that compromised the organoleptic attributes of the coffees.

By introducing refinements in the farming communities’ customary practices and providing ongoing support to improve processes, equipment, and infrastructure, Mokha not Mocha creates opportunities to reveal distinctive sensory qualities in the cup, resulting from the impeccable match between the Typica-Dawairy and Ja’adi variety and the peerless Yemeni terroir.

In so doing, too, they contribute to ensuring that the market value attributed to Yemeni coffee is
commensurate to the hard work of generations of Yemeni coffee farmers and the prestige befitting Yemen as the mythical origin of coffee.