Nav: Home > Coffee >

A Brief Introduction to Yemen's Premium Coffee Bean Varieties: Aroma, Cultivation, and Market Prices

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Mokha Mattari: A renowned coffee market name from the Mattari region in Bani Mattar (also spelled Bany Mattar) province, west of Sanaa, Yemen's capital. This high-altitude coffee typically exhibits excellent red wine aroma, dried fruit flavors, a rich body, and often displays bittersweet chocolate notes when dark roasted. High-quality Mattari beans are typically small in size.

Mokha Mattari

Mokha Mattari: A prestigious coffee market name from the Bani Mattar region (also spelled Bany Mattar) west of Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. It's a high-altitude coffee that typically exhibits excellent red wine aroma, dried fruit flavors, full body, and often displays bittersweet chocolate notes when dark roasted. High-quality Mattari beans are small in size, with a prominent sweet liqueur aroma and moderate fermented fruit notes in their raw state. They consistently emerge as winners due to their distinctly Yemeni character.

Mokha San'ani

Mokha San'ani: A broad market name for coffees from various growing regions west of Sana'a, Yemen's capital. It's a blend from tens of thousands of small farms on the slopes near the capital city (left image shows Sana'a, Yemen's capital). Grown at slightly lower altitudes than Mattari, it generally has a lighter body than Mattari, with lower acidity but good fruit aroma. It often displays better ripe fruit and wild characteristics than Mattari. Based on my experience, San'ani quality has varied greatly in recent years, with occasionally flat, earthy, or overly fermented inferior specimens. Careful cupping and selection is essential work for coffee merchants - absolutely no cutting corners.

Mokha Ismaili

Mokha Ismaili: One of the traditional ancient varieties, a market name for famous coffee from central Yemen, also described as a botanical classification of traditional Yemeni coffee with high beverage quality. Grown at very high altitudes above 6,500 feet, it's characterized by rounder bean shape and smaller size than Mattari, with full body and high complexity. It often outperforms Mattari. This is the rarest and most expensive Yemen Mokha (Yemen Mokha is already quite expensive). High-quality Mokha Ismaili comes from the Hirazi region (though less famous than Bani Matar, it's reputedly the best-producing area locally) on high mountain slopes, with Hirazi reaching maximum altitudes of 8,000 feet!

Mokha Rimi

Mokha Rimi: Produced in the Djebel Remi (also known as Raimi, Rayma) region, quality similar to San'ani. Mokha Rimi typically has slightly heavier fermentation, occasionally showing astonishingly rich raisin sweetness. When properly roasted, the coffee beans smell like opening a jar of rich fruit jam.

Mokha Yafeh

Mokha Yafeh: Produced in Yafeh (also known as Yaffe) province in southern Yemen, it's an uncommon Yemen Mokha and Yemen's only "southern flavor." Production is limited, with almost all exports going to neighboring United Arab Emirates, making it rarely seen in the international specialty coffee market.

Arabian Mokha

Arabian Mokha: A single-origin coffee from the Yemeni mountains on the southwestern Arabian Peninsula bordering the Red Sea. One of the world's finest cultivated coffees, famous for its high viscosity and distinctive rich wine-like acidity.

Yemen Mokha achieves different schools based on growing regions, much like the chocolate notes and acidity of MATTARI Mokha, and the wildness and fragrance of SANANI Mokha.

Characteristics of Yemen Coffee

Despite Yemen coffee's superior quality, smooth texture and aromatic profile, it has shortcomings - inconsistent quality assurance and uncertain bean grade classification. Traditionally, Yemen's best coffee beans come from Mattari, followed by Sharki, then Sanani. These beans have low caffeine content. Dark-roasted Yemen coffee often exhibits chocolate-like bittersweet notes, influencing today's chocolate-flavored specialty coffees to also bear the "Mokha" designation. Yemen coffee possesses the world's most unique, rich, and fascinating complex aromas: red wine, wildness, dried fruits, blueberry, grape, cinnamon, tobacco, sweet spices, woodiness, and even chocolate. You can see various adjectives applied to Yemen Mokha. Just as Mokha has multiple meanings, its English spelling also varies: Moka, Moca, and Mocca are common spellings. On Yemeni coffee bags and documents, local spellings number as many as four: "Mokha," "Makha," "Morkha," and "Mukha" - all representing the same meaning.

Yemen Mokha has complex and changing flavors. For coffee roasters, achieving the best flavor profile from Yemen Mokha is a major challenge! Light to medium roasting reveals fruit sweetness, warmth, and gentle natural fermentation notes; dark roasting showcases rich red wine aroma and bittersweet chocolate aftertaste.

Flavor: Exotic flavor, slightly wine-like, spicy and stimulating, unique and unmissable

Recommended Roasting Method: Medium roast

Rating: ★★★ - Excellent

Yemen Coffee Market

Yemen coffee is exported from December to April of the following year. A persistent problem has been that coffee from northern regions is adulterated with inferior quality before shipment from the southern port of Aden. Only coffee shipped from Hodeida port can be confirmed as genuinely from the north. Most Yemen coffee grows under natural conditions, mainly due to growers' lack of capital.

These trees originated in Ethiopia. Yemen was the world's first country to produce coffee as an agricultural crop on a large scale. To this day, Yemeni coffee farmers still use the same methods from five hundred years ago to produce coffee. Coffee berries grow naturally on trees without artificial fertilizers or pesticides, receiving moisture from少量的 mountain rain and mist in summer, flowering and fruiting. During dry winters, mature coffee berries are left to air-dry naturally on trees - a very unique and rare practice, thanks to Arabia's extremely dry climate and intense sun. In other coffee-producing regions, the same practice could cause coffee berries to rot on trees.

Yemen Coffee Origins

Yemen produces Peaberry beans: These coffee beans are smaller and rounder than most coffee beans, looking like peas, sometimes called Mokha beans. Mokha beans resemble Ethiopian Harrar beans - small, high acidity, mixed with a peculiar and indescribable spicy flavor. Careful tasting reveals slight chocolate notes, making adding chocolate to coffee a natural development.

In Yemen, coffee growers plant poplar trees to provide shade for coffee trees. As in the past, these trees are planted on steep terraces to maximize limited rainfall and land resources. Besides Typica and Bourbon coffee trees, more than ten different coffee varieties from Ethiopia are cultivated in Yemen. Authentic "Mokha Coffee" is only produced in the Republic of Yemen on the southwestern Arabian Peninsula, growing on steep mountain slopes at altitudes of 3,000 to 8,000 feet, making it the world's oldest coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee Yemen Mokha Mattari Traditional Natural Process Coffee Beans - Freshly Roasted Black Coffee Beans