Learn about the newest entry in our line of high-quality and rare coffees called the Enthusiast Series. This is the Yemen Al-Khanshali III, from the partner estates of Port of Mokha founder and Yemeni coffee legend, Mokhtar Alkhanshali. 

In Yemen, coffee grows along the terraced steps of sunny mountainsides. It has been cultivated there for over 400 years.

The coffee-growing regions of Yemen were the world’s first—and for over a century, only—suppliers of coffee to global export markets. For most of the world, before Yemeni coffee, there simply was no coffee.

Photo courtesy of Al-Khanshali Coffee Estates.

This robust agricultural history makes for an exceptional and exquisite cup; indeed, many of the ancient villages that stand atop Yemen’s coffee-laced mountains still harvest and process coffee today with the same methods from centuries ago.

Yemen’s rich heritage of coffee culture, however, remains in constant crisis due to longstanding civil war conflicts and an ongoing famine beginning in 2016 and classified by multiple NGOs as a humanitarian emergency. Last year, Yemen surpassed the Central African Republic in the 2022 Global Hunger Index with the highest hunger rates worldwide. In September 2022, an unprecedented 17.5 million Yemeni people were estimated to face food insecurity as a direct result of military blockades. 

AL-KHANSHALI COFFEE ESTATES

Port of Mokha founder, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, has a long and storied relationship with Yemeni coffee, and navigating through civil conflict, encapsulated in Dave Eggers’s NYT Bestseller “The Monk of Mokha.” Mokhtar is the owner and producer of the brand-new Al-Khanshali Estates project spread across Yemen, with a mission to revitalize the region’s coffee trade. Al-Khanshali Estates is a boutique producer and importer eight years in the making; it was painstakingly developed by Mokhtar to bring Yemen back into the specialty coffee world where it undoubtedly belongs.

This particular coffee hails from a farm in West Haraz, where high-quality and traceable coffee has been produced for many generations. One of three Yemeni farms run in partnership with Al-Khanshali Estates, its coffee is collected, processed, and milled in Sanaaz by Al-Khanshali Estates.

This coffee is 100% Ja’adi, one of the two prominent Arabica cultivars in the Yemeni trade. It’s an anaerobic natural process with a fruit-forward profile of asian pear, white grape, and raspberry, with an aftertaste of apricots.

If you’re interested in Mokhtar’s coffee journey or would like to sample taste our Yemen Al-Khanshali III, check out MOFAD’s upcoming event “An Ocean in a Cup” at Chelsea Market on February 23 at 7pm.

Details and tickets are available on MOFAD’s website.