Muriama Estate is run by the husband and wife team of Njogu Ngariama and Esther Muthoni. The name is a combination of their surnames: Muthoni and Ngariama. Initially, it was a small parcel owned by Njogu’s father, Simon Ngariama. Simon first planted coffee on the farm during Kenya’s Colonial period under British rule. At the time, native Kenyans were only permitted to plant up to 100 coffee trees. Following Kenya’s independence in the 1960s, the law changed, enabling Simon to expand the farm’s coffee production significantly. When Simon passed down the farm to his son, they continued expanding. Today Muriama Estate has roughly 4000 trees planted on 5 hectares.

For most of the farm's history, after picking, the family sold coffee cherries to a local “coffee factory” where they were blended with coffees from other farms and processed in bulk. Njogu and Esther wanted to develop alternative pathways to sell their coffee and decided to invest in post-harvest processing equipment. This enabled them to pull their coffee out of these regional blends, add more value at the farm level, and develop a brand around the quality they achieved. They joined a group of other local farmers who shared similar challenges and interests, calling themselves Kushikamana, which means “togetherness” in Swahili. We were introduced to Muriama through our work with Kushikamana and have purchased coffee from the estate nearly every year since 2017. We’ve tasted gradual improvements in quality each season, and this year Muriama was one of the best coffees we tasted from Kenya. We’re excited to see Muriama’s debut on our single-origin menu this season!