Even the air seems to have the aroma and the colour of coffee! Dyes as warm as Masai’s skin, as dense as the colours of Tanzania: the blue of the sky, the green of the forest, the red of the berries. An enticing mix between the primitive and wild instincts of this mysterious continent and the ethereal and delicate beauty of a hill vineyard: it is as if we draw the brown skin of natives near the white complexion of two blond girls, running barefoot one after the other on the dusty soil of Africa. That’s all right, because the plantation of Monduli can boast noble Italian origins. But to learn more about these origins, one needs to go back in time, and exactly to the 1920s, when Count Vittorio Davico di Quittengo arrived here to pay his final respects to his brother, tragically died in a car accident during his honeymoon. He fell in love with this land and wanted it to become his new home country.


It was as early as 1929: two years later, in a small plot of the virgin forests of Lake Tanganyika, he started to cultivate coffee. Today, the estate extends over a surface of 1,263 acres, of which 295 are covered by plants of Arabic Coffee: this is an exclusive quality, repeatedly recognized as one of the best coffees in Tanzania. We are in the heart of primitive Africa, at an altitude of 51,800 feet: the forest of Mount Monduli, the top of which is 76,200 feet high, is the setting of the coffee estate, where 500 Masai individuals work regularly. Here, 30 kilometres from Arusha, in a mansion located on a hill, live now Ruggero and Corrado, descendants of Count Davico di Quittengo and heirs of his great passion for coffee.


I walk amid the rows of coffee plants with the desire of exploring, discovering and feeling the emotion of picking a ripe coffee berry from a grown plant: after running a long path, one day its bean will be tasted in some part of the world, I think. And I can see huts, houses and other working establishments, including the school: Monduli is more than a simple plantation, it’s a community born from the combination of love for coffee and entrepreneurship with the social commitment and the care for the relations with native people. For the quality of its product and the beauty of its landscape, this marvellous place has been selected some years ago by an important Italian coffee company for the setting of its promotional video.