St Helena, Wranghams Estate
In the heart of the South Atlantic Ocean lies the remote, tropical windy island of St Helena. The island has been a British colony since the 17th Century and is one of the most isolated of British overseas territories. The native Green Tipped Bourbon Arabica varietal coffee was introduced to St Helena in 1733 by its then owner, The East India Company, brought over from the fabled port of Al-Mokha in Yemen.
The island’s most famous resident was the Emperor Napoleon, himself a huge coffee enthusiast, who was exiled to St Helena after his defeat at Waterloo 1815 until his death in 1821. Many connoisseurs consider this to be the best coffee in the world – and Napoleon agreed, stating that “the best thing about St Helena is the coffee”!
Wranghams estate lies just above Bamboo Hedge, approximately 550 meters above sea level. The great Wranghams house is situated about 5 miles south of St Helena’s main town of Jamestown, sitting on top of a wooded promontory with views of Mount Actaeon and Diana’s Peak to the north, and the village and landscape of Sandy Bay to the south. It dates from the eighteenth century, when St Helena was run by the English East India Company and was an important stop-off point for sailing ships returning from India and the East.
When Wranghams house was bought by its current owners in 2014 they discovered an overgrown coffee plantation – only around 30 bushes had survived, which were pruned back and cultivated with great care to revive the farm. A further 350 bushes were then planted from the saplings that had grown at the base of the existing plants, and today Wranghams Estate is thriving, producing one of the greatest coffees in the world.
