Notes: Hibiscus, apple candy, peach gummy
Country: Ethiopia
Region: Worka Chelchele, Gedeo
Cultivar: Kurume, Dega, Wolisho
Process: White Honey
Altitude: 1,944 MASL
Description:
Sourcing coffee from Ethiopia, perhaps more so than anywhere else in the world, is a collaborative effort. With something like 95% of the coffee trees cultivated in the country under the husbandry of smallholder farmers, it literally takes a village to raise enough coffee cherry to export. The washing station (even in the case of minimal intervention naturals) is the local hub for most specialty coffee in the country. While farming families may dry coffee cherries on their patios or lawns to be roasted and enjoyed at home, export grade specialty coffee almost always requires centralized infrastructure. In this case, that infrastructure—including logistics and farmer support strategies—is provided by Tracon Coffee, a 30+ year veteran organization of the coffee industry. Tracon’s interests extend from farm and washing station ownership and management to running a dedicated cupping lab and a 30,000 square foot coffee processing facility that allows them to mill and finish coffee for export on-demand.
This honey process coffee from Worka Chelchele, just east of Yirgacheffe town, is one of them. It’s a master class in style and grace, a heavily depulped coffee—about as close as you can get to a washed coffee, just without formally fermenting and using all that water for rinsing. It’s fruity in a more obvious way than classic washed Yirgacheffes, but without the berry-blast of traditional naturals, and it elegantly retains that je ne sais quoi of southern Ethiopian terroir, the iconic combination of cultivar and place that makes the regions’ coffees distinctively floral, and time-honored as some of our favorites in the world.