Our story
From Angola's highlands to Northern Europe
Vargar exists because a coffee origin this good deserves better than obscurity. Here's the fuller story.
A legacy interrupted
In the early 1970s, Angola was the world's fourth-largest coffee producer. Vast estates across the central highlands — Huambo, Bié, Kwanza Sul — shipped Robusta and Arabica across the globe. The war that followed independence in 1975 emptied those plantations; farmers fled, trees went untended, and the forest reclaimed the terraces. For decades, Angolan coffee all but disappeared from world markets.
A new generation
Since the mid-2010s, smallholder families have been returning to the planalto's volcanic soil, replanting heirloom Arabica and Robusta trees alongside shade cover, much as their grandparents did. It's slow, hands-on work — most of these cooperatives farm fewer than two hectares each. What comes out of the ground is exceptional: high-altitude, naturally sweet, and completely distinct from the bulk Robusta Angola once exported.
Why we do this
We buy green coffee directly from cooperatives in Huambo and Bié, at a price well above commodity rate, and ship it to Europe ourselves. We roast in small batches — never more than we can sell fresh within a few weeks — and we ship straight to your door in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal. No distributors, no anonymous blends, no bag sitting in a warehouse for a year.
“We're not trying to build the biggest coffee brand. We're trying to make sure this particular coffee, from this particular place, gets the respect — and the price — it deserves.”
— The Vargar team
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