Ethiopia origin trip — what we found in Yirgacheffe

Andrii reports from our spring sourcing trip — the farmers, the altitude, and the lot that made our cupping table go silent.

Every April, I fly to Addis Ababa and drive south into the Gedeo Zone. Yirgacheffe sits at between 1800 and 2200 metres above sea level, and the air is thin enough to make even a short climb feel like hard work. The washing stations are busy this time of year — cherry is being sorted, fermented, and laid out on raised drying beds under gauze canopies to protect from afternoon rain.

The lot that stopped us

On day three we cupped seventeen samples at a cooperative near the town of Kochere. Most were excellent — floral, juicy, clean. But one made the entire table go quiet. It was from a 1.2-hectare plot belonging to a smallholder farmer named Tadesse Bekele. Jasmine, bergamot, peach, and a brightness that felt like biting into a ripe nectarine.

We bought his entire available lot: 600kg of parchment. After milling and export logistics, we'll have around 480kg of green coffee — enough for roughly four months of supply. It will be our featured single-origin for summer and autumn, and we'll print Tadesse's name and elevation on every bag.