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Yemen Haraazi Supreme – a coffee pictorial from Martin Diedrich

The steep, rugged Haraaz Mountains of Northwestern Yemen are a world apart from the rest of the country. The terrain is dramatic, wild, rocky, and often inaccessible.The area has resisted the modern world and in the hinterlands one can still feel the pulse of medieval times. Ancient fortified hilltop villages of stone houses cling to the steep slopes, creating a near bibilical panorama. Rocky mountain slopes are carved with ingenious centuries-old stone terraces to preserve the scarce soil and precious rain in this dry region, in order to grow coffee. Approximately 500 families, living throughout the region, continue an unchanged tradition …

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Yemen Mocca: Coffee, not Chocolate – by Martin Diedrich

If coffee were a tribe, Yemen Mocca would definitely be the shaman. Cappucino, Cafe Latte, or Cafe au Lait are unmistakably coffee beverages, while Cafe Mocha is thought of as a hot chocolate with coffee or espresso, or generally a chocolate based drink spiked with coffee. To get to the point of setting the record straight on this matter we must travel back intime to a distant corner of the globe. At the very Southern tip of the Arabian Penninsula, flanked by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, is the remote country of Yemen. Coffee Arabica was named for …