This coffee’s story spans centuries and continents to arrive brewed in your cup: learn about the history of the SL28 coffee variety and how it found its name.

1922: A vacant sanatorium named after a Scottish missionary—Dr. Henry Scott—is repurposed by the Agricultural Department of the Kenya Colonial Administration (yes, under British colonial rule) to conduct public research. The sanatorium, operational for only a handful of years, is converted into laboratories and renamed the Scott Agricultural Laboratories.

1931: A senior officer at the Coffee Section of Scott Laboratories tours Tanganyika, now Tanzania, to find hardy and resilient coffee trees for experimental cultivation. He returns to Kenya with seeds collected from a wild tree he perceived to show drought, disease, and pest resistance, but after extensive testing, the tree only exhibited some tolerance to drought. Perhaps he overstated his case.

1935 to 1939:  Forty-two coffee varieties are studied at Scott Labs. The twenty-eighth, SL28, is collected from a single plant in a population of cultivars named Takganyika Drought Resistant.

From classification, SL28 has eclipsed most of its Scott Labs siblings not for any kind of tolerance to extreme conditions, but for its outstanding cup quality. Sparkling, acidic, and effervescent, SL28 may be susceptible to pest and disease, but it tastes so wonderful that cultivation has spread to specialty farms around the world.

This SL28 was grown 4,300 miles from the original Scott Labs in an intercrop with silver oak and Macadamia shade trees. Shwe Yi Mon is just outside of Mandalay and the farm owner, U Ye Myint, earned his botany degree in 1993 and began coffee cultivation in 1998. He is the founder of Myanmar Coffee Association and Mandalay Coffee Group.

Producer: U Ye Mint
Farm: Shwe Yi Mon Estate
Region: Pyin Oo Lwin, Mandalay, Myanmar
Varietal: SL28
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1100 MASL

We Taste: Pear, mulled wine, oak barrel. Medium-low acidity, fruity finish.