Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka (R), founder of Gorilla Conservation Coffee with Melanie Hawken at the Lionesses of Africa ‘Start-up Night Africa!’ event in London 2018
Getting global public and industry acknowledgement for your products is always rewarding, and that is certainly the case for multi-award winning entrepreneur and renowned gorilla conservationist, Dr Gladys Kalema- Zikusoka. Her new social enterprise, Gorilla Conservation Coffee, has just been awarded with a top ranking in the prestigious Coffee Review Top 30 Coffees list in the USA.
Gorilla Conservation Coffee’s flagship and exceptional Kanyonyi Coffee Blend, was selected as the No. 29 coffee on Coffee Review’s list of the Top 30 Coffees of 2018. Kanyonyi Coffee Blend is named after the former lead silverback gorilla of Mubare Gorilla Group, the first group habituated for tourism at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda. The coffee is a medium roast, with an origin from Buhoma in South West Uganda. In a blind tasting assessment, the judges scored the coffee 47 out of 69, with 9 points for aroma, 9 points for flavour, 8 points for acidity and structure, 8 points for body, and 8 points for aftertaste, all adding up to ranking in the prestigious Top 30 coffees list.
The judges described Kanyonyi Coffee Blend as richly sweet, chocolaty, and with dark chocolate, caramel, date, gardenia, cedar in aroma and cup. They went on to commend the deeply sweet structure with round, gentle acidity and a velvety mouthfeel, describing the chocolate-toned finish leading with notes of date and caramel in the short, and cedar and gardenia in the long.
The judges of this year’s Coffee Review Top 30 Coffees list for 2018 said in praise of the Kanyonyi Coffee Blend: “The sale of this impressively chocolaty and floral Uganda cup provides multifaceted support aimed at preserving mountain gorillas in their human and natural environment.”
Gorilla Conservation Coffee pays a premium of $0.50 per kilo above the market price to coffee farmers living close to the gorillas around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, as well as supporting them with training in sustainable coffee farming and processing. Additionally, for each kilo of roasted coffee sold, $1.50 goes directly toward work to preserve mountain gorillas.
To find out more about Gorilla Conservation Coffee and the work of Dr Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, visit the website https://gorillaconservationcoffee.org/ for more information.