The best coffee is from Yemen
This is my favorite coffee.
It’s called Matari, from a Yemeni cooperative called Al-Hamdani that’s based in Sana’a. Every week I can make it, I buy two bags from “my coffee guy” at St. George’s Market in Belfast.
The company’s origin story is that it’s 130 years old and still run by the Al Hamdani family. In 1994 they moved to the capital Sana’a.
S.D. Bell’s, the Irish company I buy it from, sources Matari from the cooperative. And, honestly, I first bought it out of some sense of trying to help coffee growers in Yemen but it is the. best. coffee. I’ve ever had.
On Saturday I found out S.D. Bell’s only has about 6 weeks worth of coffee left, and “my guy” said he doesn’t know when — if — they can get more.
Yemen was one of the first places coffee took hold. Mocha is named for the Red Sea port of Al Mokha where it was first exported from Yemen.
The country’s coffee industry was already struggling a decade ago due in part to the demand for water and competition for land with farmers who were urged to grow qat.
Despite the challenges, Yemen’s Agriculture Ministry was trying to double the country’s coffee output as a way to boost the economy, but the civil war has put an end to that.
I don’t know the extent of the Al-Hamdani collective’s situation. They could be struggling or out of operation due any number of multiplying issues — the war, financing, shortage of water, disease — or it could be they’re unable to get coffee out of the country.
Mokha was long ago eclipsed by the Aden and Hodeida ports, the latter of which has been blockaded periodically by the Saudi-led coalition since it intervened in Yemen’s civil war more than two years ago.
The blockade of Yemen’s ports has prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid, food — Yemen imports about 90 percent of its food — and medicine needed to deal with the current cholera outbreak.
As the French NGO Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) explained in March, the blockade has also forced coffee exporters to go overland through Saudi Arabia through the heart of the conflict.
To make matters worse, the Agriculture and Trade Ministries are limited and the country’s central bank is in Aden, under control of the Houthis.
According to the International Coffee Organization, Yemen’s coffee production fell 8 percent in 2015–2016 to 138,000 60-kilo bags, and exports fell 60 percent to their lowest level in 25 years.
NGOs have repeatedly urged the Saudi-led coalition to ensure the ports remain accessible for the delivery of food and humanitarian aid. They must also be opened to allow coffee producers and other exporters a chance to save their livelihoods.
