day9.coffee day9

San Francisco · United States

Port of Mokha

Since 2013 · Mokhtar Alkhanshali

Visit website

Overview

Port of Mokha is a San Francisco coffee company founded in 2013 by Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an American of Yemeni descent who travelled into Yemen during the early years of the civil war to revive specialty coffee in the country where coffee was first commercialized. In February 2017, Coffee Review awarded its Hayma microlot a 97 — at the time the highest score the publication had ever bestowed — and Mokhtar's escape from war-torn Yemen with his first coffee samples became the subject of Dave Eggers' 2018 book The Monk of Mokha.

Known for

  • Founded 2013 to revive Yemeni specialty coffee during civil war
  • Hayma microlot rated 97 by Coffee Review in February 2017
  • Subject of Dave Eggers' 2018 book The Monk of Mokha
  • Pioneered the Mokha Method — farmer training, microloans, 50% female cooperative boards, drying-bed infrastructure
  • Pays Yemeni farmers 30%+ above prevailing rates to incentivize coffee over khat

Why it matters

Yemen is where coffee was first commercially traded — every cup of coffee originally shipped through the Red Sea port that gives the company its name — but a century of decline followed by civil war had reduced its specialty presence to nearly zero by the early 2010s. Port of Mokha is one of a handful of operations that has rebuilt a Yemen-to-shelf supply chain capable of clearing the bar of contemporary specialty buyers, and its 97-point Coffee Review score was the moment the global market acknowledged Yemen as a credible modern origin again.

Production

destoning
null
head roaster
null
color sorting
null
roaster machine
null
filter equipment
null
cupping frequency
null
roastery location
San Francisco, California
espresso equipment
null
annual volume tonnes
null

Recognitions

  • Coffee Review 97 points for Hayma microlot (2017)
  • Subject of The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers (2018)

Sources

More roasters