{"product_id":"uganda-sironko-station-nyasaland-sl14-sl28-natural-signature-series","title":"Uganda | Sironko Station | Nyasaland\/SL14\/SL28 Natural | Signature Series","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne bag. Twenty-five kilos. Seventy-four bids. This is the lot we chased through Mountain Harvest's \u003cem\u003eParadigm Shift\u003c\/em\u003e auction and brought home to the Central Coast — a pure natural from Sironko Station on the Ugandan flank of Mount Elgon, grown between 2,000 and 2,200 metres and dried without a drop of fermentation water. It cups the way the altitude promises: pineapple and orange blossom up top, raisin and cocoa underneath, and a clarity that most naturals never find.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch4 class=\"mb-1 font-weight-bold\"\u003eSironko Station\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"row\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"col-md-6\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSironko Station is Mountain Harvest's research hub — the place where the company works out what Mount Elgon coffee is actually capable of before rolling those methods out across its wider network. It sits in Sironko district in eastern Uganda, close enough to the mountain that cherry can come down from communities at the very edge of the growing belt and still arrive on the drying beds the same day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the station unusual is the degree of control. Cherry is refractometer-tested on delivery and only accepted at 18° Brix and above, which is a demanding threshold — it rules out anything underripe before it ever reaches a bed. Accepted cherry then goes straight onto raised beds whole, with no fermentation step at all. This is the \"pure natural\" in the lot's name: no water, no tank time, no yeast, nothing but fruit and air.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrying is the hard part, and it is where most naturals come undone. The station's teams turn and monitor the beds continuously, bringing the cherry down to roughly 10% moisture at a pace slow enough to avoid the ferment-y, alcoholic notes that plague rushed naturals and fast enough to avoid mould. The result is a cup with the fruit intensity you expect from a natural but with edges that stay defined rather than blurring into jam.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4 class=\"mb-1 font-weight-bold\"\u003eMount Elgon, Eastern Uganda\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"row\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"col-md-6\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMount Elgon is an extinct volcano straddling the Uganda–Kenya border, and its Ugandan slopes carry some of the highest arabica in East Africa. The cherry in this lot came from the Yilwanako (Mayiyi) and Buginyanya communities on the northern side — remote smallholdings where coffee grows amongst bananas, beans and shade trees on volcanic soil that has been weathering for millions of years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt 2,000–2,200 metres the nights are cold and the cherry ripens slowly. That slow maturation is what concentrates sugar and acidity in the seed, and it is the reason a coffee from this altitude can carry a stone-fruit sweetness through a natural process without turning muddy. Smallholders here typically farm well under a hectare each, so a 25 kg lot like this one represents the picking of a handful of families over a matter of days.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbout the Nyasaland Coffee Variety\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"row\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"col-md-6\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNyasaland is one of the great survivors of African coffee. It traces back to Typica seed carried from Jamaica to Malawi — then the British protectorate of Nyasaland — in 1878, and from there to Uganda around 1910. On Mount Elgon it took root so thoroughly that Ugandans stopped calling it Nyasaland at all and simply called it Bugisu, after the region and the people who grew it. Malawi has largely given the variety up; Uganda's smallholders never did.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGrowers keep it for the cup, because by every agronomic measure it is a difficult plant to love. Nyasaland is tall, awkward to harvest, yields medium-to-low, and has no meaningful resistance to either coffee leaf rust or coffee berry disease. For decades farmers have been offered free, high-yielding, disease-tolerant hybrids to replace it. Many of the oldest surviving trees on Elgon date to the 1940s and were saved by growers who refused to pull them out — including through the Amin years, when a great many were destroyed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat that stubbornness buys is aromatics. Nyasaland beans run smaller than the hybrids, but they carry a floral intensity — jasmine, orange blossom, sometimes a soft almond note — that the replacement varieties simply do not produce. In this lot it shows as the orange blossom lift that sits over the pineapple, and it is blended here with SL-14 and SL-28, two Kenyan selections bred for drought tolerance and cup quality respectively. The SL-28 contributes the blackcurrant-adjacent structure and the acidity backbone; the Nyasaland supplies the perfume; the natural process ties them together with raisin and cocoa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\u003ch4 class=\"mb-1 font-weight-bold\"\u003eIn the cup\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"row\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"col-md-6\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePineapple, chocolate, orange blossom and raisins. Roasted for filter. It is sweet and layered enough to reward a careful pourover, and it will take a slightly coarser grind and a gentler pour than you might expect — the fruit arrives on its own without being chased.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Central Coast Coffee","offers":[{"title":"Upcoming Roast \/ 160g","offer_id":51268756570148,"sku":"UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_160","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Upcoming Roast \/ 320g","offer_id":51268756602916,"sku":"UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_320","price":89.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Upcoming Roast \/ 1000g","offer_id":51268756635684,"sku":"UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_1000","price":229.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 1 \/ 160g","offer_id":51268756668452,"sku":"r1_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_160","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 1 \/ 320g","offer_id":51268756701220,"sku":"r1_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_320","price":89.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 1 \/ 1000g","offer_id":51268756733988,"sku":"r1_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_1000","price":229.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 2 \/ 160g","offer_id":51268756766756,"sku":"r2_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_160","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 2 \/ 320g","offer_id":51268756799524,"sku":"r2_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_320","price":89.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 2 \/ 1000g","offer_id":51268756832292,"sku":"r2_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_1000","price":229.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 3 \/ 160g","offer_id":51268756865060,"sku":"r3_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_160","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 3 \/ 320g","offer_id":51268756897828,"sku":"r3_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_320","price":89.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 3 \/ 1000g","offer_id":51268756930596,"sku":"r3_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_1000","price":229.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 4 \/ 160g","offer_id":51268756963364,"sku":"r4_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_160","price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 4 \/ 320g","offer_id":51268756996132,"sku":"r4_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_320","price":89.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false},{"title":"PLACEHOLDER 4 \/ 1000g","offer_id":51268757028900,"sku":"r4_UGA-SIRO-NYAS-NAT_1000","price":229.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0109\/4175\/9552\/files\/uganda-sironko-station-nyasaland-sl14-sl28-natural-signature-series-01_91f33e7e-9fec-4233-9315-e0d4da587e24.jpg?v=1786793089","url":"https:\/\/www.centralcoastcoffee.com.au\/products\/uganda-sironko-station-nyasaland-sl14-sl28-natural-signature-series","provider":"Central Coast Coffee","version":"1.0","type":"link"}