As is true of most of the world’s coffee-producing countries, the story of coffee's beginnings in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is steeped in the history of European colonialism. The first colonial plantations in PNG were established in the 1800s in coastal areas under British and German influence, who had split control of the island territory between north and south, respectively. While geopolitical control of the Island would change hands in the years following, coffee production continued to grow, most notably with the discovery of the 'interior' Highlands region in the 1930s, including the Western Highlands region, where this coffee comes from.
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It was around this time, in the late 1920s, that the famed Blue Mountain coffee variety is speculated to have made its way from Jamaica to Papua New Guinea. This Education Lot selection features the Jamaican Blue Mountain variety as well as the varieties Mundo Novo and Caturra, which are both related to the original parent varieties Bourbon and Typica. There are yet other unique varieties associated with Papua New Guinea, such as Arusha, of which there is conflicting information as to its genetic origin. One possible scenario is that Arusha is closely related to the K7 variety developed by Scott Laboratories in Kenya, from where it made its way to Tanzania and, finally, Papua New Guinea.
Crop to Cup, the importer for this lot, has been working in Papua New Guinea for ten years now and continues to maintain a number of projects there in cooperation with smallholder producers and the rare producer cooperative. This lot is an example of one such project, a targeted QC initiative focused on increasing the time and overall quality of washed parchment drying via the use of raised beds, solar driers, and moisture measurement tools. While such practices may seem commonplace compared to the rest of the coffee-growing world, this isn't the case in PNG. Oftentimes, coffees in PNG are dried as quickly as possible to avoid theft and/or simply to rush the coffee to market or to one of the many available middlemen looking to purchase parchment.
