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New crop natural process (and washed) Ethiopian coffees are highly anticipated by roasters the world over, arriving annually in earnest from August to October, prized for their sublime flavor palette of jammy and tropical fruit, intoxicating aromatics and seemingly endless finish. As we say fond goodbye to our 2018 Gedeb, we also welcome in an exciting natural from the Koke washing station in the Yirgacheffe District (woreda). The station sits around 2200 meters and 96 smallholder farmers, from plot sites both above and below it bring hand-picked ripe cherry there for cleaning and sorting. The cherry is then brought to raised beds, where it will dry in the under constant vigilance for 21 days. It must be noted that we no longer need to refer generically to the old-timey “heirloom varietals” tag; there are three identifiable landrace varietals here, namely Kurume, Dega and Wolisho. They have been growing for many hundreds of years in Yirgacheffe, considered the” birthplace of coffee”, along with countless other varietals, mostly unidentified.
Once drying has ended the beans are trucked to the large, modern Tracon Trading facilities in Addis Ababa (400 km away) for final processing (removing the parchment layer) and color-sorting. While this is the traditional pathway for most natural process coffee in Ethiopia, our partners at importer Ally have been in a direct feedback loop with the growers for many year, and this is as a result a unique Koke natural. Super clean in the cup, bursting with tropical fruit notes like guanabana and papaya, berry compote, and cocoa nibs in the mid-palate. Nice body and a long, sweet finish. As impressive a pourover as we've had in years, and we've had beauties!
