Tanzania Karatu — Vohora SL-28
Fermented Washed Microlot
Some coffees surprise you with how different they are. This one surprised us with how good something so balanced can be.
This SL-28 microlot comes from Neel and Kavita Vohora in Karatu, Tanzania.
It is deeply sweet, full-bodied, and incredibly pleasant to drink.
Graham cracker and brown sugar give the cup a rich, familiar sweetness. Red apple brings just enough brightness to keep everything alive, eventually giving way to something almost caramel-like as the cup settles.
And underneath it all is a deep, syrupy body that brings everything together.
Nothing is fighting for your attention.
It just works.
Flavor Notes
Graham Cracker
Brown Sugar
Red Apple
The Cup
The first thing we notice is the sweetness.
Brown sugar. Graham cracker. Caramel.
Then comes red apple—a gentle fruit acidity that gives the cup some lift before seeming to melt right back into all that sweetness.
The body is deep and syrupy, giving the coffee a richness that stays with you after each sip.
And if you spend some time with it, there is more to find. Plum, stone fruit, nuts, citrus—little things that can appear and disappear depending on how you brew it and where you are in the cup.
You might find those.
You might find something completely different.
That's kind of the point.
Who It’s For
If you love coffee that is sweet, rich, and balanced, start here.
This isn't an aggressively bright coffee. It isn't funky or experimental for the sake of being different.
It's approachable enough to simply make a really great cup of coffee, but there's enough happening underneath to reward you when you decide to pay attention.
That's one of our favorite kinds of coffee.
Easy to love. Worth getting curious about.
About Neel & Kavita
Neel and Kavita Vohora are a brother-and-sister team carrying forward generations of their family's work with coffee in northern Tanzania.
Their family has farmed near Karatu, along the outer ridges of the Ngorongoro caldera, since the 1970s.
Today, Neel oversees the farms and much of their work with different coffee cultivars and processing methods. Kavita leads the export side of the family business and is also their lead cupper and a licensed Q-grader.
What we appreciate about their work is the curiosity behind it.
They separate coffees by cultivar and continually experiment with how each one is handled—not simply to make something unusual, but to understand what can make each coffee better.
This lot is one result of that work.
A Little About SL-28
SL-28 is a coffee cultivar closely associated with some of the great coffees of East Africa.
It's especially well known in Kenya, but its history is also connected to Tanzania, where it continues to thrive on the Vohoras' farms.
SL-28 is capable of producing beautiful fruit and acidity.
But what we love about this particular expression is what happens around that brightness.
The red apple is there, but so are brown sugar, body, and an almost caramelized sweetness.
No single piece needs to dominate.
Good coffee doesn't always have to choose a side.
The Process
Fermented & Washed
Neel and Kavita are thoughtful about how processing affects the coffee they grow, adjusting their approach to bring out the best in different cultivars.
That's important to us because processing can easily become the story.
Here, it isn't.
What you're left with is a coffee that tastes sweet, clean, rich, and unmistakably itself.
The process serves the coffee—not the other way around.
How We Like to Brew It
Pour Over
We love this one as a pour over.
It gives the red apple a little room to show itself while keeping the graham cracker, brown sugar, and syrupy body right there with it.
But don't worry too much about chasing our tasting notes.
Brew it the way you like your coffee. Drink it hot. Let it cool. Pay attention one morning and barely think about it the next.
Coffee doesn't need to be a test.
It just needs to be yours.
Coffee Details
Producers: Neel & Kavita Vohora
Region: Karatu District, Arusha Region, Tanzania
Elevation: 1,650–1,800 MASL
Cultivar: SL-28
Process: Fermented & Washed
A Final Invitation
A lot of work happened before this coffee ever reached us.
Generations of a family growing coffee in Tanzania. Neel and Kavita learning their land and their cultivars. Harvesting, processing, exporting, roasting.
We take that work seriously.
But when the coffee finally reaches you, we think something should change.
It stops being about us.
Now it's your morning. Your kitchen. Your favorite mug. Your taste.
Maybe you find the brown sugar we did. Maybe the apple jumps out at you. Maybe you don't think about any of that and simply know that you really like the cup in front of you.
That's enough.
Actually, that's what we're after.
We do the work so you can do the discovering.
From our family to yours.
