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Coffee from individual farmers is becoming less difficult to find in Ethiopia, but it is still extremely rare and requires a full supply chain in its support. This is a single-farmer microlot from the Wenago district of Ethiopia's famous Gedeo Zone, milled and exported by the former manager of the robust Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union.
Brief History & Flavor Profile
Wenago is one of 8 woredas, or districts, that together comprise the dense and competitive highland zone of Gedeo. The entire Gedeo zone is in fact often referred to as “Yirgacheffe” after its most famous coffee-producing district. Wenago is just a few kilometers north of the town of Yirga Chefe itself. As a coffee terroir, this part of Gedeo 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.
Processing Detail & Quality Control
The vast majority of coffee processing in Ethiopia is centralized due to complete lack of infrastructure or efficiencies at the farm level, but larger plots like Wolde's allow for greater personal control. Wolde Hirbe's farm, located in Wemayranago's Jemjemo community, is 14.25 hectares in size, enormous compared to the average 1 hectare or less belonging to most coffee producers in the Yirgacheffe district.
Wolde employs 9 pickers each harvest for cherry collection. Cherry is delivered throughout the day during harvest, where it is inspected and sorted for acceptability based on ripeness and uniformity. Once received, cherries are moved directly to the drying tables where they spread in a single layer to dry in the sun. The full drying process normally takes 3 weeks.
Once cherries have been thoroughly dried and rested, the dried fruit is hulled from the coffee seed locally, and then transferred to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. In Addis the coffee is dry-milled by Konga Trading PLC, using modern color sorting equipment and a fleet of trained workers who repeatedly hand-sort the coffee for export. Takele Mammo, the founder of Konga Trading, was for many years the manager of Ethiopia’s Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), one of Ethiopia’s highest quality exporters and supply chains for Fairtrade and Organic certified coffee. During his time with the union, Takele, in partnership with Royal, regularly facilitated select individual farmer exports together each year from within the cooperative union structure. It was considered very unusual at the beginning, but over time this effort laid the groundwork for what is now a robust demand for unique, small-farm coffees from Ethiopia’s most famous specialty area.
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