Port of Mokha
order your sample now!
Includes:
- 1 sample of each coffee lot in the auction / 100g per sample
- 1 Coffee Guide
Sample set fee: $
order your sample setAuction times in your region
To be announced
- 02:00 am - Los Angeles
- 05:00 am - New York
- 10:00 pm - London
- 13:00 am - Riyadh
- 18:00 am - Shanghai
- 19:00 am - Tokyo
- 19:00 am - Seoul
- 21:00 am - Sydney
Meet the treasures of the mist
Each varietal featured in this year’s auction is carefully selected from small lots dotting the ancient mountainsides of Yemen, where coffee was born over half a millennium ago and still carries on a legacy of excellence today.
From a great height in the Yemeni mountainside, over 2,400 meters above sea level, coffee trees make their movements slowly and deliberately.
The stress of growing in an arid climate with limited access to water forces these coffee trees to grow at an incremental pace as they carefully invest every molecule of their energy. This uniquely challenging environment produces complex, vibrant profiles that form an intricate web of flavors.
The varietals featured in this year’s auction offer an unparalleled breadth and depth of flavor that could only be crafted by this particular terroir.
You’ll find ascendant bands of sweetness from lush papaya and honeysuckle to tart notes of clementine intermingled with crisp brown sugar and rock candy. These flavors expand alongside washes of sparkling acidity reminiscent of grapefruit that dance across your palette with each sip..
Port of Mokha’s Tradition of Excellence
After hosting the first ever Yemeni coffee auction in 2018, Port of Mokha furthered its legacy of sourcing exceptional lots of coffee from select regions of Yemen, logging the two highest scores in the history of Yemeni coffee.
The coffee featured in this year’s auction has consistently logged exceptional scores, highlighting that, just like its terroir, it is truly beyond comparison or imitation.
YEMEN'S COFFEE HISTORY
Coffee is beautiful. In its earliest days it was a hidden gem. An obscure beverage consumed in the lodges and gatherings of sufi mystics in Arabia. For 150 years, starting in the 16th century, Yemen was the exclusive coffee supplier to the entire world. All coffee shipped out of the region via the Port of Mokha, on the Red Sea.
Yemen’s unique microclimate and high elevation where coffee grew produced drought-resistant plants that yielded complex coffees with sweet, chocolatey flavors. To imitate Yemeni coffee, many coffee houses would add chocolate to drinks brewed from beans of other origins (hence the term ‘mocha’).
It is thought that sometime in the mid-1600’s, an Indian pilgrim smuggled seven green coffee seeds out of the country, and from those seeds, coffee cultivation spread across the planet and grew into a worldwide commodity. Though 90% of the world’s coffee can be genetically traced back to Yemen.
In the last thirty years, we have begun to see a change. The specialty coffee movement has emerged and begun to restore coffee to its former glory. Speciality coffee at its best places value on quality over cost, experience over convenience and most of all treats with dignity the incredible people in the mountains and valleys who grow this plant whose seed we love so much. Coffee auctions have, in this time, been the driving force in our industry pushing the limits of quality and cost.