Zambia 🇿🇲 Anaerobic Misambo *Natural*

One whiff from the cupping-table and the role anaerobic processing plays is immediately clear. The fragrance is intense—rustic sweetness and sticky dried fruit, with winey fermented accents. The wet aroma shows molasses, palm sugar, fermented strawberry, and pomegranate juice. This is a big coffee in overall intensity and body— like a fruity dessert wine with curious, edgy yet syrupy flavors.

The fruit carries a fermented edge: berry kefir, tropical kombucha, and overripe orange. Expect dark cocoa and rich bean-to-bar chocolate, accented by plum and a hint of unfiltered sake as it cools. There’s also a dark malt/yeast aromatic that recalls chocolate stout. Zambian coffees are rare for us—and finding one as an anaerobic natural made this lot an easy yes.

Zambia isn’t a producing origin we see often. While coffee is exported from the region, its coffee-growing history is relatively young: first plantings began in the 1950s, with meaningful growth only in recent decades. Kateshi is one of a cluster of estates near Misambo town (Kasama, Northern Province), where estates and plantations make up much of Zambia’s export coffee.

This is an anaerobic natural (dry process): whole cherry is held in airtight containers for a couple of days, then laid out to dry on patios. Anaerobic lots can lean “wild” or funky; Kateshi surprised us—fruit is well-balanced and integrated into sweetness and chocolate-forward bittersweets.

Cultivars here are largely Catimor hybrids (chosen for disease resistance) and tend to produce larger seeds, consistent with AAA sizing.