Karumandi AA #023

One of our favourite Kenyans of the 24/25 season returns in fine form, with a slightly different presentation this year - the old-school Kenya currant-tomato axis as a backbone but with a super bright, electrifying acidity and complex herbal/citrus notes.

Karumandi is one of twelve wet mills operated by Baragwi Farmers' Cooperative Society, which was registered in 1953 and remains among the larger societies in Kenya by membership. Consistency across Baragwi's sites is managed in part by rotating factory managers between wet mills every two years or so, which spreads working knowledge through the society rather than concentrating it at whichever station happens to be performing, and it goes some way to explaining why individual Baragwi factories tend to hold their form across seasons rather than spiking and fading; and indeed Karumandi had the second highest cherry price paid to farmers last season out of all the Baragwi FCS sites.