Ethiopia Shoondhisa Natural

    The Dambi Uddo drying station, high up in the hill of Shakiso, Guji, buys cherry from roughly 100 small-holder farmers. While the norm in Latin America is for farmers to own many hectares with thousands of coffee trees, in Ethiopia, most growers are small landholders often harvesting coffee in their gardens, alongside crops for personal/family consumption. The average farm size is 2.5 hectares. While this is actually larger than the average farm size in Colombia, planting is much less dense and nearly all of the production happens within a fully or semi-forested system. This means that there is much lower yield per tree and many fewer trees per hectare. All of the cherry that is delivered to Dambi Uddo is fully organic.
    In this beautiful landscape of forest jungle at an elevation of 2100-2350m, you can hear the workers singing cultural Guji songs while moving coffee around. Most of the cherry being delivered are one of two varieties; Gibirinna 74110 and Serto 74112. Both of these are from the Metu Bishari selections made in the forest of the same name in the Illubabor Zone by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC) in 1974. They were selected for their resistance to Coffee Berry Disease. Now they are some of the most propagated varieties in Ethiopia.
    The cherries are all dried at the Dambi Uddo station on raised beds at an elevation of 2170m for around 15-20 days in very thin layers. They are moved and rotated frequently to ensure even and precise drying. The net results of all the effort are some of the most vibrant and pristinely clean natural Ethiopian coffees we have seen. Unlike many naturals, they present with high florality and acidity with very little booziness. They are often described as "Ethiopia first, natural processing second."  This year's selection is no exception and we are loving the clean cup profile of fresh cherry and floral jasmine with a fruity berry undertone.