Notes: Blackberry jam, cherry, dark chocolate
Country: Ethiopia
Region: Aricha, Yirgacheffe
Varietal: Kurume
Process: Washed process
Altitude: 1,900 - 2,000 MASL
Description: Adorsi is a private washing station located in the Yirgacheffe district, in the heart of southern Ethiopia’s coveted Gedeo Zone. Gedeo is a narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors, and has been known commercially as Yirgacheffe for many years after the Yirgacheffe district itself, one of Ethiopia’s first areas to fully wash its coffee. As a coffee terroir, Yirgacheffe has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee—known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, and seductively punchy and sweet when sundried--and hardly requires an introduction.
Adorsi is a very young washing station, having only been first established in 2018. Adorsi is owned and operated by Testi Trading PLC. Testi Trading has grown a lot in the past few years and are a big part of the growth of independent processors and exporters in Ethiopia’s very competitive south doing the good, laborious work of processing differentiation, traceability, and pushing quality boundaries.
Adorsi’s farmer contributors are typical in size for the area, which is to say, tiny: half a hectare of coffee per farmer is the average. Cherry is delivered to the washing station daily throughout the harvest months, where it is depulped and fermented for 36-48 hours depending on the local climate. After fermentation is complete the wet parchment is washed in long channels to scrub off residual mucilage and float off the lowest density coffee. Drying occurs under parabolic shade netting for 5-7 days and rotated consistently until reaching a final resting moisture content of 11-12 percent.
Private processors like Adorsi are admirable businesses. It’s tough being a private processor in Gedeo, as the sheer density of competition among washing stations tends to push cherry prices as high as double throughout a single harvest, and privates often don’t have the backing of a larger union to secure financing, regulate cherry prices, or bring export costs down with centralized milling and marketing. Successful private washing stations like Adorsi, then, need to be not only standout quality processors to stay afloat; they must also be excellent business developers with connections and community standing, in order to continue winning the business of farmers and buyers alike, and stay afloat for the long term. Testi Trading invests in local education among its communities, including in the Aricha kebele, where it has built 2 primary schools (and has already done similar work in Guji, West Arsi, and Shantawene, Sidama).