From Cherry to Cup

The story of a good coffee doesn’t start in the roaster’s drum or the barista’s hands. It begins long before that—on a faraway hillside farm, where the morning mist still hangs low and someone is reaching for a ripe, red cherry.

At origin, nothing is rushed. Cherries are picked by hand—often by women who know which branches hold the fruit that’s ready, and which still need a few more days of sun. The work is repetitive, but deliberate. Each picked cherry is a decision.

From there, the cherries move to the washing station. At Karongi, Western Rwanda, for example, the sorting begins immediately—first by hand, then through floatation tanks that help remove underripe or damaged fruit. What’s left are the cherries that made it—dense, sweet, and clean.

Processing comes next. At Roots & Origin, we work with both natural and washed lots, but every step is traceable. For naturals, the cherries are laid out on raised drying beds and turned regularly over the course of 20 or so days. The sun does most of the work, but it takes an attentive hand to get it right. Too fast and the cup turns dull. Too slow and the risk of fermentation climbs. You need patience, and instinct.

Once dried to the correct moisture level, the coffee is hulled to remove the parchment or dried cherry skin. Then it’s sorted again—by size, density, and colour—bagged in GrainPro and jute, and prepped for export.

From there, it makes its way across the ocean or sometimes by air. Green, fragrant, and carefully packed. By the time it lands in Perth, Melbourne or Sydney, the work of hundreds of hands is hidden in the sack. But if you roast it well—and brew it with care—you’ll find all of it still in the cup: the altitude, the soil, the hands that turned each cherry on the bed.

At Roots & Origin, our role is to make that journey visible—and to ensure that what began with a picker on a hillside arrives with its story intact.