Bani Sulaiman XCI

Bani Sulaiman XCI · Community Lot · Alchemy XCI · Yemenia · Hayma Kharijiya, Sana'a

Coffee from these villages was once hulled where it grew and carried down to Mocha, the port that gave the drink the name it still has in half the world's languages. That trade is centuries old here, and the farms that fed it are the farms behind this lot.

Bani Sulaiman is a community of smallholders, none of them working much ground. Some of the trees are said to be centuries old. The past five years have brought a great deal of new planting, most of it on land cleared of qat, and farmers have become noticeably more particular about which seedlings go in, because quality now changes what they are paid for the result.

XCI is the newest and most ambitious protocol in Qima's Alchemy series. It takes anaerobic fermentation further than anything before it and stays clean doing so, intense and structured without the blur that usually follows fermentation pushed this hard.

The community has form. A Bani Sulaiman honey lot in the 2024 auction drew one of the highest prices of that year. What limits the valley is water, and in particular the lack of tanks to hold what little of it arrives.