When you buy coffee from a country, what do you look for? Most of us build a picture of what a good example is, and there will always be our own slight bias. These could be price, process or roast-based, for starters. Vera’s coffees are some of the best in the Ngoro Ngoro region and Tanzania as a whole, too. Tanzania Ngila Estate has been a regular in our line-up over the last 5-6 years. Vera is the best and most reliable producer we have bought from in Tanzania.

You may notice that we have Tanzania Ngila Estate much earlier than in previous seasons. For a combination of reasons, it took (practically) a year to receive the coffee after the harvest in 2024. Selling the new harvest was going to be harder. Cutting a long story short, we connected Vera with our friends at Omwani, and a new future distribution channel is in place for these fantastic coffees. If you like to buy coffee from lots of roasters, please look out for others selling Ngila Estate, as we can’t buy it all.

When you have a clean coffee like the fully washed Kent, my first idea is to brew it as filter coffee.

Top Trumps

Farm: Ngila Estate.

Area: Arusha, Northern Tanzania

Process: Fully Washed (and shade-grown)

Varietal: Kent

Screen Size: AA (Also known as big and consistent)

Altitude: 1560-1640 Meters above sea level

Roast: Medium/light filter.

(Filter) Cup potential:

Aromatics: Brown Sugar, Soft fruit  | Body: Light and Tea Like|Acidity: Crisp, Clean, juicy white grape. 

On opening, there are some currants and a soft fruit building in the background. A super clean, white wine-like acidity breaks through that peaks and then softens into all of the white fruit sugars you can wave a stick at. Light body.

Farm Info

The Ngila Estate is based on the slopes of the Ngorongoro crater, founded by German settler Mr. Quellhorst.  With over 100 years of growing coffee, Ngila has a set-aside of preserved rain forest that reaches 1800 meters above sea level. Ngila is certified by the Rainforest Alliance and uses natural insecticides, like Neem extract, and mineral fertilisers. Ngila determines the trees that they are going to pick using a Brix meter; picking is selective, and sorting is very intensive.

 In 1992, the estate was acquired by the Meyer family, and currently it is owned by Vera Stücker. The estate spans 100 hectares and maintains approximately 150,000 coffee trees, while also emphasising environmental practices via initiatives such as planting 4,000 indigenous trees annually to combat soil erosion, or reforesting lands along the Ngila River to promote ecosystem health.