DAK – Cassis 250g | Kenya

About This Coffee

Cassis is the second Kenyan lot DAK have brought in this season, and it's a jammy, fruit-forward one — the name is barely an exaggeration. It's a washed field blend from the Rungeto Farmers Cooperative Society, on the slopes of Mount Kenya in Kirinyaga County, sourced from smallholder growers around the long-running Karimikui factory, which has been processing cherries there since 1966.

Coffee is a relatively recent arrival in this part of Kenya — tea has traditionally been the area's main crop — but the region's volcanic soil and altitude approaching 1,800 metres have proven well suited to it. Rather than a single varietal, this lot is a classic Kenyan field blend: SL-28 and SL-34, the varieties Kenyan coffee built its reputation on, alongside the newer, more disease-resistant Ruiru 11 and Batian, all grown side by side and processed together.

The washing itself follows the region's traditional method — cherries hand-sorted, pulped, fermented in tanks, then run through washing channels before finishing on raised drying beds, where air circulates underneath the beans as they dry. It's a labour-intensive approach, and it's a large part of why coffees from this part of Kenya read as cleaner and more intense than washed coffees from most other origins.

In the cup, expect dark, saturated fruit — think blackcurrant and cassis liqueur rather than fresh berries — layered with rhubarb tartness and a pomegranate-like brightness underneath. The acidity here isn't shy; it's what gives the fruit its lift and stops the cup from ever feeling flat or one-note. As a new harvest lot, freshly landed, this fruit character will be at its most vivid right now.

Kenya's cooperative system, of which Rungeto is a part, works differently from the single-estate model common in Central America — cherries from dozens of smallholder plots around Karimikui are pooled and processed together at the shared factory, which is part of why field blends like this one, rather than single-varietal lots, are the norm here rather than the exception. It also means quality depends heavily on the cooperative's own standards and the factory's processing discipline, which Kirinyaga has built a strong reputation for over decades. Buying a Kenyan field blend like this is as much a bet on the cooperative and the factory as it is on any one farm.

Freshly roasted by DAK Coffee Roasters in Amsterdam and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.