Ethiopia Yirgacheffe - Kochere Natural - Roasted Coffee

Summary

Details

Kochere District & Washing Station Details Kore is a village (kebele) in the Kochere woreda (district) of Yirgacheffe, located near the village of Ch'elelek'tu. Kochere coffees are distinctive for their strong fruit tea, citrus, and stone fruit notes.

Cherries are delivered to the Kochere washing station, where they are de-pulped within 12 hours and washed using spring water. The station serves hundreds to over a thousand smallholder producers who deliver cherry throughout the harvest season. Farmers grow on small plots of red-brown clay soil inter-cropped with other fruits, and use no fertilizers or pesticides. Because day lots blend cherries from many producers, full traceability to individual farmers is difficult — though Fig Leaf makes every effort to source from the same washing stations annually through established export partners.

Natural coffees in Ethiopia are first sorted for ripeness and quality before being rinsed clean Then they are spread on raised drying beds or tables, where they will be rotated constantly throughout the course of drying. Drying can take an average of 8–25 days, depending on the weather.

Yirgacheffe Region

Yirgacheffe has become famous for coffees that tastes like blueberries, strawberries and mixed fruits. This region is plentiful. The thick vegetation is a product of the warm tropical climate with moderate wet and dry seasons. Most coffee is shade-grown by small producers using organic practices. Coffees are cultivated from 1,600 to 2,400 masl in these highlands. The multitude of micro-regions creates complex profiles depending on the washing station a particular coffee is from. 

Ethiopia

Among coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia holds near-legendary status not only because it’s the “birthplace” of Arabica coffee, but also because it is simply unlike every other place in the coffee world. Unlike the vast majority of coffee-growing countries, the plant was not introduced as a cash crop through colonization. Instead, growing, processing, and drinking coffee is part of the everyday way of life, and has been for centuries since the trees were discovered growing wild in forests and eventually cultivated for household use and commercial sale.

The majority of Ethiopia’s farmers are smallholders and sustenance farmers, with less than 2 acres of land apiece across all crops they grow. In many cases, it is almost more accurate to describe these farms as “coffee gardens” as the trees do sometimes grow in more of a garden or forest environment than what we imagine fields of farmland to look like. There are some large privately owned estates, as well as co-operative societies comprising a mix of small and more mid-size farms, but the average producer here grows relatively very little for commercial sale.