Their cup overflows: Why future is bright for Saudi coffee growers

Gibran al-Maliki walks through clouds and into the tree-lined stone terraces hugging the mountainside – treading the same path his family has walked for generations.

He stops to bend down and gently squeeze a sapling’s green-red cherry between his fingers. Ripening too fast, he says.

“Seven centuries and the farming process is still the same,” he smiles, “and the joy is still the same.”

Here in the remote villages dotting the mountains of the Saudi-Yemeni border, coffee has been many things over the centuries: a symbol of hospitality, a community uniter, a means of celebrating and peacemaking, and a currency.

Now, an ambitious new plan by the Saudi government envisions yet another role for this ancestral crop: a national industry aiming to fill your next morning cup.

Amid government pitches of prosperity for rural communities, these farmers are looking for the first time to share their generations-old passion for Arabica khawlani coffee with the world. Yet locals say tradition, as much as market economics, will determine Saudi coffee’s future success.

The big plans for Saudi Arabia’s small-time coffee farms are the vision of the Saudi Coffee Company, an entity formed and launched in May by the government’s Public Investment Fund, which aims to pour $320 million into the fledgling coffee sector over the next 10 years and grow an additional 900,000 Arabica trees. Currently there are 200,000 coffee trees under cultivation in the Jazan area among the 400,000 overall in southwest Saudi Arabia.

With dreams of boosting national production from the current modest 300 metric tons to 2,500 metric tons by 2032, they are tapping into one of the oldest, if unheralded, coffee-growing regions in the world.

Yet here in Jazan in southwest Saudi Arabia, which, along with neighboring Yemen, hosts some of the oldest coffee trees in the world, growing, harvesting, and brewing coffee is still largely seen as a joy to be shared, rather than a business to profit from.

Uncle Gibran’s farm

One of the first in Jazan’s Al Dayer area to turn his love of coffee into a local business is Mr. Maliki who, upon retiring from teaching in his remote mountaintop village of Al Qateel in 2007, looked to revive his family farms at 1,500 meters (about 4,900 feet) above sea level.

“I decided to plant coffee not because I thought the future was in Saudi coffee, but because coffee is what I grew up with,” says Mr. Maliki, who now sells beans under a moniker used with affection by neighbors: “Uncle Gibran.” “Coffee is something everyone enjoys.”

Mr. Maliki’s terraced farm, the largest coffee farm in Saudi Arabia with 14,000 trees, is in an alpine area contiguous with the Khawlan mountains of Yemen, whose coffee is prized by enthusiasts worldwide.

Yet while coffee was commercialized in Yemen in the 18th and 19th centuries by the Ottomans and the British, turning coffee trees into a business is new in Jazan, where production was for local consumption only.

A handful of Arabica trees are still planted around each home here for personal use. 

“No one ever thought of commercializing it. It was simply daily life,” says fellow coffee farmer Ahmed Bani Malik.

Mr. Bani Malik is among a half-dozen local landowners who began growing coffee commercially in the 2010s after the Saudi government launched Jazan coffee festivals to raise the local bean’s profile within the kingdom and to encourage area residents to bring their homegrown coffee to be graded and taste tested.

Saudi firm Jabaliyah has spent the past four years developing local farms by bringing in agricultural experts from other coffee-growing countries to update Jazan’s basic coffee production techniques – such as humidity control and proper drying.

Local coffee culture

Yet even today you would be hard-pressed to find coffee beans for sale; only one specialized roaster sells coffee for out-of-towners.

But everywhere locals’ dalleh coffee pots are always at the ready, to pour a guest a cup, or three, of the ultra-light Saudi coffee.

It’s even considered rude to speak to a guest before first pouring them a cup of freshly brewed coffee, which is also used to seal business agreements, even arranged marriages.

The wooden pestle and mortar used to grind coffee here is still called mufarreh – or joy-giver – because its rhythmic, songlike pounding would signal to Bedouin shepherds and farmhands that someone in the village was preparing a brew and that they would soon be invited in for a cup.

Mr. Bani Malik’s farm, beyond a military checkpoint in a valley near the mountain ridge separating Saudi Arabia from Yemen, illustrates some of the prospects and challenges of commercializing the Saudi bean.

His oasis of mango groves, papaya, flowers, herbs, and 5,000 coffee trees has ample water, but, like many coffee plantations, is near or in a zone militarized by the ongoing Yemen war.

The lone small processing mill in the area is often flooded with sacks of residents’ unhusked coffee; other Saudi coffee-growing areas have no mills at all. Sorting beans is costly.

Yet, “with the right care, Saudi coffee can really take off and be a success,” Mr. Bani Malik insists.

More cafes, better coffee

A country of coffee drinkers, Saudi Arabia imports $320 million worth of coffee annually, 80,000 tons, making it the 18th-largest coffee importer in the world. 

The drive to build a local industry coincides with the explosion of specialty coffee consumption in the kingdom.

With the recent expansion of social freedoms have come thousands of new cafes – and a more discerning taste for coffee.

Kal Coffee, a Jeddah-based importer and wholesaler, and the kingdom’s first licensed coffee-quality evaluator, has witnessed a surge in demand for single-origin-sourced coffee from various countries, regions, elevations, and flavor profiles.

Most in demand? Homegrown.

“Saudis are appreciating a good cup of coffee,” says Abdullah Bagaba, director of Kal Coffee and a third-generation coffee trader, as an instructor trains two young baristas behind a glass wall.

“Before it was difficult to convince people to pay 20 riyals ($5.50) for a bag of coffee beans. But once they tried it, they noticed the difference in taste, and they are demanding it.”

Kal recently assessed a new brand of Jazan coffee.

“Frankly speaking, the results were stunning. They have very good coffee, and there is still huge room to improve,” Mr. Bagaba says.

“Specialty coffee is taking off in Saudi Arabia because we love complex flavors,” says Almohaned Almarwai, a Saudi coffee entrepreneur who co-owns Ash Cafe in Jeddah and is co-founder of the Arabian Coffee Institute, an industry consultant. “Coffee is embedded in our culture. Coffee is part of who we are as Saudis.”

At a cupping arranged at the institute’s training kitchen at the back of the buzzing Ash Cafe, Mr. Almarwai guides participants to sniff unmarked cups of coffee from seven countries, and then shows them how to slurp and swish the brew to hit their taste buds evenly.

At the end of the tasting, the coffee revealed to be Saudi khawlani stood out with flavors of dried fruit, dates, chocolate, and caramel.

“It’s a complex cup, which is very desirable,” Mr. Almarwai says. “Production just can’t keep up with demand.”

The sought-after flavors of Saudi khawlani combined with an urge to serve homegrown coffee have led local coffee wholesalers, roasters, and cafes into bidding wars over the few hundred metric tons produced.

One kilogram of coffee (2.2 lbs) sold by Mr. Bani Malik in Jazan to wholesalers for $32 is eventually sold to consumers in Riyadh and Jeddah for $80-$110 a kilogram, or $36-$50 a pound. One ton of Saudi coffee is now 55 times more valuable than a ton of Saudi crude oil.

While the economics sort out, Jazan residents say maintaining their coffee’s communal role will eventually pave the path for khawlani beans from their mountains to your coffee cup.

“We hope to see Saudi coffee become a world brand, but we are focusing on getting our beans to market,” Mr. Bani Malik says. “So we can keep the dalleh flowing for guests.”