Yemeni Mocha coffee has a cultivation history of over five hundred years and was the first coffee exported to Europe via the port of Mocha, once astonishing Europeans. Today, the term "Mocha" refers both to Yemeni coffee and to Ethiopian sun-dried beans as well as chocolate-flavored specialty drinks. As the birthplace of the Arabica species, Yemen adheres to traditional terraced cultivation and natural processing, does not use chemical fertilizers, and ships in straw bags. The main producing regions include Mattari, San'ani, Ismaili, Rimi, and Yafeh, with flavors ranging from red wine aromas and dried fruits to chocolate bittersweet, each with its own distinctive character. Front Street Coffee recommends paying attention to this legendary bean known as the diamond in Asia's coffee crown.
Over five hundred years ago, Yemen had already adopted ancient methods to cultivate coffee. By the early seventeenth century, the first batch of Yemeni coffee was exported to Europe through the ancient small port of Mocha, and Europeans were captivated by it, so they named this mellow and beautiful drink from the port of Mocha "Mocha coffee"—this is the origin of the name.
Ethiopia, across the Red Sea from Yemen, also exported coffee via the port of Mocha, so the country's sun-dried beans are often given the name Mocha as well (for example, Mocha Harrar, Ethiopia Harrar). Today the old port of Mocha has long been abandoned due to silt accumulation (the current place name is Al Makha), and the export focus has shifted to the port of Hodeida to the northwest, but the title Mocha has long been deeply rooted in people's minds and widely spread.
Deeply roasted Yemeni coffee often carries a chocolate-like interweaving of bitterness and sweetness. Influenced by this, today's espresso drinks flavored with chocolate sauce are also given the name "Mocha." Therefore, when seeing the words "Mocha coffee," it may refer to authentic Yemeni coffee, coffee from neighboring Ethiopia, or merely a specialty drink with chocolate sauce added.
In addition, because Turkey once monopolized coffee exports for a hundred years, the word Mocha was also used as another name for coffee. In Japan, even today many people still think coffee is Mocha.
Yemeni Mocha
Mocha is a port of the Arab Republic of Yemen. Before the sixth century AD, Yemen had always been called Arabia, so the coffee trees transshipped from there to other regions were also called Arabian coffee trees. As the birthplace of the Arabica species, Yemen was once all the rage under the name "Mocha coffee," but today's prosperity is no longer what it was. The coffee beans planted in the Arabian region in those years were exported through the port of Mocha, so people collectively called coffee produced in the Arabian region Mocha coffee. Yemeni Mocha once swept the globe and set off a Mocha whirlwind, but unfortunately the good times did not last long; political turmoil plus a lack of planning in cultivation made Mocha's output extremely unstable.
Yemen was the first country in the world to produce coffee on a large scale as a crop. To this day, the cultivation and processing methods of Yemeni Mocha are almost identical to those of hundreds of years ago. On most Yemeni coffee farms, farmers still refuse to use artificial synthetic products such as chemical fertilizers. Coffee farmers plant poplar trees to provide the shade coffee needs. As in the past, these trees are planted on steep terraces in order to maximize the use of scarce rainfall and limited land. Even more distinctive is that Yemeni Mocha beans are still shipped in bags woven from straw, rather than the chemical woven bags used elsewhere. If you advocate pure nature, Yemeni Mocha can satisfy your wish to drink completely natural coffee.
Among common Yemeni Mochas, Mocha Mattari is the most famous. Mattari from Bani Matar (also written Bany Mattar) province is a high-altitude coffee, usually with excellent red wine aromas and dried fruit flavors, a full body, and often a chocolate-like bittersweetness when deep-roasted.
Due to Yemen's unstable political situation in recent years, production has plummeted (civil war broke out in 1994, and coffee production fell from 127,000 bags in 1957 to only 42,000 bags), and Mocha Mattari, the most renowned in the specialty coffee world, has become a target for adulteration, with cases of mixing with lower-grade inferior beans often heard of. Nowadays, even if labeled Mattari, it does not represent high quality. Top-quality Mattari beans are small in shape, and the green beans have a striking sweet wine aroma and a moderate ripe-fruit fermented flavor. If you can select an excellent Mattari, its performance will never disappoint coffee connoisseurs.
Mocha San'ani is a blend of beans from tens of thousands of small farms on the hillsides near the capital San'a (the left image shows Sana'a, the capital of Yemen). The cultivation altitude is slightly lower than Mattari, and the overall mouthfeel is thinner than Mattari, with lower acidity, but good fruit aromas, often possessing riper fruit flavors and a wilder character than Mattari. According to my experience, in recent years San'ani quality has been uneven, with inferior products occasionally appearing that are bland, earthy, or overly fermented, so careful cupping and selection is a task coffee merchants must do and must never be lazy about.
Mocha Ismaili is one of the traditional ancient varieties, grown at extremely high altitudes above 6,500 feet. It is characterized by rounder beans, smaller than Mattari, a thick body, and high complexity; generally speaking, it often performs beyond Mattari. This is the least produced and most expensive Yemeni Mocha (Yemeni Mocha is already expensive to begin with). High-quality Mocha Ismaili comes from the mountainside areas of the Hirazi district (although less famous than Bani Matar, it is the region with the best local reputation in Yemen), and the highest altitude in the Hirazi district reaches 8,000 feet!
Mocha Rimi comes from the Djebel Remi (also known as Raimi, Rayma) district, and its quality is similar to San'ani. In my experience, Mocha Rimi usually has a slightly heavier fermented flavor, and occasionally shows an astonishingly rich raisin sweetness; if roasted properly, the coffee beans smell like opening a bottle of rich jam.
Mocha Yafeh comes from Yafeh (also known as Yaffe) province in southern Yemen. It is a relatively rare Yemeni Mocha and also Yemen's only "southern taste." Its output is also not large, and it is almost all sold to the neighboring United Arab Emirates, so it is rarely seen in the international specialty coffee market.
The various cultivation regions of Yemeni Mocha have created different schools because of their different origins: the chocolate notes and acidity of MATTARI Mocha, the ruggedness and fragrance of SANANI Mocha; together they created "Mocha," this "diamond in Asia's coffee crown." A coffee expert once commented: "Yemeni Mocha's flavors are too diverse. It is not just that different origins, different varieties, and different batches differ; every burlap sack, even every cup, has a different flavor." Precisely because it is so complex and changeable, for roasters, how to roast out the best flavor of Yemeni Mocha is a major challenge! The fruity sweetness and mild, warm sun-dried fermented flavor shown by medium-light roasting; the rich red wine aroma and bittersweet chocolate finish shown by deep roasting—both are memorable again and again, "the aftertaste lingers around the beams, not fading from the mouth for three days." This is why many coffee gourmets passionate about this pursuit list Yemeni Mocha as their favorite.
Ethiopia (Abyssinia) (Africa)
The origin of the name coffee comes from the Gaffa area in the southwest, which, along with the Sidamo area in the south, is a major producing region. In addition, Harrar in the eastern highlands is also famous for coffee. The beans are small and fragrant, and special names such as "Harrar Mocha" and "Longberry" have unique flavors and are usually referred to simply as "Mocha." Their specifications are divided by the proportion of defective beans mixed in into G (grade) 1 to G8, and recently the most attention-grabbing is the high-quality "washed Ethiopia."
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
