Every month, our resident Q Grader and third-generation Wogan, James, searches the world to find a coffee that is ‘weird and wonderful’, and truly excites. A micro-lot, a great back-story, an impressive cooperative, or a particularly unusual taste; once it's gone, it's gone.

We keep the prices of these extraordinary coffees down, so that you have the chance to try something that you might not be able to get your hands on otherwise. 

The farm

Shwe Taung Thu farmers group, which translates to ‘Golden Farmer’, is a farmer-owned venture, made up of over 3000 Danu and Pa-O smallholder farmers from 17 villages across the Ywangan area of Southern Shan State, Myanmar. Women make up 60% of the total workforce.

Shwe Taung Thu empowers small-scale farmers, giving them control over coffee production, pricing, and community contributions. This frees them from middleman exploitation and boosts their profits. The focus is exclusively on producing dry naturals – the climate and terroir is particularly suited to this process, with very dry heat during the harvest season providing excellent conditions for drying.

Coffees produced by Shwe Taung Thu are named after the villages where the coffee is grown and processed. Each community has its own working group which is responsible for managing the cultivation and processing of the coffee within each village. In return, the operational team at Shwe Taung Thu offers valuable support in various forms, including technical guidance, market access, and financial assistance to bring about quality control and fairer trade conditions for its coffees. Through its cooperative model, representatives from each of the 17 villages have voting rights in Shwe Taung Thu's General Assembly to select its Board of Directors.

This coffee is grown and processed by 450 households from Myin Kya Doe village. The production of this coffee is managed by a core group of around 10 members and this is the fifth year they have produced specialty coffee.