From Volcano
to Your Roaster.
Every bean carries a biography. Ravino Limited exists to make sure that biography is never lost — from the moment a cherry reddens on the branch to the instant it reaches your cupping table.
Where the Mountain
Holds Its Breath
Mt. Kenya rises to 5,199 metres, the second-highest peak on the continent. Its lower slopes — between 1,500 and 2,100 metres above sea level — receive two distinct rainy seasons, creating a double harvest that most coffee-growing regions can only envy. The volcanic soils are rich in potassium and phosphorus, the same minerals that give Kenyan coffee its legendary, wine-like acidity. Ravino sources exclusively from smallholder farms nestled in this volcanic belt, where families have cultivated coffee for three generations.
Patience in the
Picking
At Ravino, only hand-picked, fully ripe cherries are accepted. No strip-picking. No shortcuts. Each picker — many of them smallholder owners themselves — selects cherry by eye, returning to the same branch multiple times as fruit reaches its peak crimson. A skilled picker can harvest 50 kilograms of cherry in a single day, yet they choose speed only when ripeness allows it. This selective harvest is the first, most irreversible decision in the quality chain. A green cherry picked today cannot be ungreened tomorrow.
Water, Fermentation,
Transformation
Within hours of picking, cherries arrive at the wet mill. They are floated — defective cherries, being less dense, rise and are removed immediately. What remains enters the pulper, where the outer skin is stripped and the beans, still wrapped in mucilage, begin a 24-to-72-hour fermentation in clean mountain water. This is where Kenyan washed coffee earns its character: the fermentation unlocks complex organic acids, building the brightness and fruit depth that make Mt. Kenya coffee unmistakable. Ravino's mill managers monitor every tank by hand, testing readiness by touch and smell, not by clock alone.
Slow Sun.
Deep Flavour.
After washing, parchment coffee is laid on raised African drying beds — thin, even layers that allow airflow beneath and above. At altitude, Mt. Kenya's equatorial sun is intense but the air remains cool, producing a slow, even dry over 12 to 21 days. Workers turn the parchment every hour in the morning and every two hours in the afternoon, ensuring that no bean dries unevenly. Nights are cold enough that the beds are covered, slowing moisture loss further. This patient drying locks in the sugars and acids that will later sing under the heat of a roaster drum.
AA. AB. PB.
The Kenyan Hierarchy
Dry milling is where identity is assigned. Parchment is hulled to reveal the green bean, then sorted through a cascade of screens. Beans that pass screen 18 become Grade AA — the largest, densest, and most coveted. Screen 15–17 yields Grade AB, full-flavoured and high-volume. And then there are the peaberries: naturally occurring single-seed cherries where the usual pair of flat-faced beans fuse into one dense, rounded pearl. PB lots are smaller and roast with a different heat profile — many cuppers find them brighter and more concentrated than their flat-bean counterparts. Ravino sorts, cups, and certifies each lot separately.
Nairobi to the
World's Roasters
Every Ravino lot is cupped by our team before a single kilogram leaves Kenya. Green beans are stored in grain-pro lined jute bags, each tagged with its lot ID, harvest date, processing station, and farm cluster. We export FCL and LCL to roasters in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and East Asia — working with forwarders who understand that specialty coffee is a living product, not a commodity. A Ravino purchase is a direct relationship: you know whose hands touched your coffee, what mountain it came from, and when it left the ground.