Papua New Guinea - Colbran

 Golden Raisin, Watermelon Juice, and Black Cherry

Region: Baroida Estate, Aiyura, Kinantu
Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea 
Farmer: Colbran Family
Varietal: Arusha, Bourbon, Mundo Variety
Process: Natural
1850 masl

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a relative newcomer to the specialty coffee scene. The remote locations of the nation’s smallholders—who produce 85% of total coffee in the country—combined with historically-poor infrastructure has made the transition to specialty difficult. Nonetheless, the country is working towards innovative solutions that will hopefully lead to better quality coffee and improved livelihoods for the nation’s smallholder coffee producers.
Baroida Estate is located in the Kainantu District, Eastern Highlands Province. The estate was founded by Ben Colbran in the 1960’s when the Government encouraged foreign agriculturalists to begin cultivating land throughout the highlands. Ben first purchased the land from a native man named Taro and was amongst the first farmers to cultivate coffee in these valleys. Today, Ben’s son Nicol runs the plantation.
The Baroida plantation sits at the apex of the Lamari river valley and Mount Jabarra range. The plantation itself sits at about 1,691 meters above sea level amongst thousands of hectares of cleared land with former colonial coffee estates surrounding them (now run by native landowners) and flanked by mountains filled with smallholder coffee producers who cultivate close to a million trees.