Notes: Raspberry, Stone Fruit, Black Tea

Processing: Washed

Elevation: 1,900-2,100 MASL

Varietal: Bourbon

Region: Gitwe Hill, Burundi

Color: Agtron 67 Whole Bean | 98 Ground

About
Raspberry Hill fell into our lap by way of one of our favorite "coffee hunters". We got a call saying there was a coffee that had unexpectedly become available for us. Did we want it? We thought about it for a few seconds but it was obvious that we wanted the coffee. A complex, layered, Burundi is always welcome 'round here. This lot comes from Heza Washing Station on Gitwe Hill, a place run by the incredible team at Long Miles Coffee. In the cup, it's everything we want from a great washed Burundi, bright, delicate, and layered. You'll likely taste something like raspberry. soft stone fruit and a silky black tea finish.

More About The Coffee
This lot comes from Heza Washing Station, high up on Gitwe Hill in Burundi's Butanyerera Province. In Kirundi, 'Heza' means 'beautiful place'—and standing there, at nearly 2,000 meters above sea level with panoramic views of the East African sky, it's easy to understand why. Getting to the station is an adventure in itself, switch-backing up mountainsides and crossing small hand-built log bridges. It's remote, but the surrounding community is deeply rooted in coffee.

The station is operated by Long Miles Coffee, one of the most respected specialty coffee operations in Burundi. In 2025, 554 farmers from Gitwe Hill delivered cherry to Heza, most of them tending small plots alongside food crops like onions, sweet potato, maize, banana, cassava, and beans. Long Miles built their own 7,055-tree farm on one of Gitwe's slopes, just above the washing station, a way of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the community that grows their coffee.

The processing here is meticulous. Freshly harvested cherries are floated and hand-sorted for ripeness on arrival. They're then pulped and fermented underwater for 36 hours beneath a plastic tarp. After fermentation, the parchment is sometimes 'footed', a team physically agitates and dances on the slippery parchment to loosen any remaining mucilage before it's rinsed clean, graded by density, and soaked for another four to six hours. The parchment then rests on covered pre-drying tables for six to 48 hours, hand-picked constantly for any under-ripe, over-ripe, insect-damaged, or defective beans. Finally, it moves to traditional African-raised drying tables where it slowly dries for 16 to 20 days until it hits the ideal 10.5% moisture level.

The result is a coffee that reflects every step of that care, clean, bright, expressive, and deeply tied to the place it came from. Bourbon grown at this elevation, processed this well, is one of the most exciting things happening in specialty coffee right now, and we're stoked to be sharing this one with you.

Raspberry Hill | Heza, Burundi