Acacia Hills

Elephants, giraffes, hippos, buffalo, zebras, wildebeest, rhinos, lions, leopards, cheetahs and hyenas are all found here—to name just a few! Acacia Hills Estate has been in existence for over 50 years, but in 2012 Mark Stell from Portland Roasting Company and Leon & Aideen Christianakis (local Tanzanian coffee farmers) decided to purchase and reinvigorate the estate with a new specialty approach. The coffee estate is a partnership of growers and roasters and this relationship is a powerful combo that works to elevate coffee in the entire Ngorongoro region of Tanzania.

Ngorongoro Private Collection Auction

JANUARY 2021

The inaugural Tanzanian Ngorongoro Private Collection Auction was held in partnership with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence. Acacia Hills took out both 1st + 2nd place in the rankings, as well as have six lots in the top ten! We’re proud to have supported, purchased and championed their agronomy experimentation and evolution over the years, and have already secured one of these winning lots to be released later in 2021!

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Explorer Cupping: Acacia Hills

MAY 2020

Mark, Aideen & Leon helped us kick off our Explorer Cupping series with dedicated interviews. We were also able to feature their first honey-processed Gesha.

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Field Report: Tanzania 2019

NOVEMBER 2019

We had the privilege of visiting the Acacia Hills farm situated in the Ngorongoro region of Tanzania. Five Senses have a relationship with them that goes back over 7 years, and boy it’s one worth getting excited about.

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Tanzania Water Project

2017-2018

From building an elephant-proof dam to piping water 1.5 miles to the village and setting up multiple 500L tanks, this hasn’t been a small project. The result: bringing easy water access to over 2000 people!

The Origins of Acacia Hills Gesha

MARCH 2017

Willing to expand and experiment, the Acacia Hills team planted new Gesha, Pacamara and Castillo trees on the farms. After years of research and development, the first harvest of Gesha arrives! This coffee was featured in our ‘Geshas Around the World’ tasting flight at MICE.

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Cupping at the Crater in Tanzania

SEPTEMBER 2013

From the inception of Acacia Hills, the goal was to not only improve their own coffee, but to elevate the coffee of the entire region. With Mark having first hand experience as a coffee buyer, he understood the appeal of being able source and explore a region at a single, central cupping. From this, the Ngorongoro Coffee Group was born and in 2013 their inaugural ‘Cupping at the Crater’ event was held – which we were lucky enough to attend!

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A Hidden Gem of Tanzania

2007

Mark Stell and Leon & Aideen Christianakis purchase a run-down Acacia Hills Estate and begin the long task of getting it operational again. After a chance meeting with our green bean buyer at the Gems of Araku cupping event in India, Mark invited Five Senses to attend the inaugural Cupping in the Crater Event.

Delicious coffees with positive impact.

Close to the birthplace of Gesha, our fruitful relationship with Acacia Hills continues to bear delicious fruit. The dramatic landscape on the slopes of the Ngorongoro Crater and the surrounding microclimate has resulted in a unique expression of the Gesha varietal. Tanzania is renowned for its vast wilderness, famous landscapes and stunning coffees boasting elegant acidity. Coupling the natural terroir Tanzania offers with a mature Gesha varietal yields a unique and unmistakable flavour profile of pure elegance. Rigorous hard work, diligence and the leadership of Leon & Aideen Christianakis have resulted in this beautiful multi-dimensional coffee. Expect a light fruity exchange you’ve come to expect from other Acacia Hills varieties and experience the perfect medley of creamy peach, makrut lime and fragrant jasmine.
Grown in some of Africa’s most famous landscapes, this coffee does the farm’s rich 50-year history justice. These peaberries are carefully sorted on the slopes of a collapsed ancient volcano in the wilderness of Northern Tanzania. A naturally occurring mutation in around 4% of coffee cherries, results in a single ‘peaberry’ forming inside the cherry. Named after their distinct shape, peaberries are generally much smaller in size and more dense which can result in a brighter, more pronounced acidity. While we’re big fans of the coffees grown at Acacia Hills, we’re even bigger fans of the work Leon and Aideen have done to support producer peers in the region, alongside their social impact work with local communities.