Ethiopia Chelbesa Village Espresso

Tasting notes: Blueberry, Blackberry, Plum.

Coffee breakdown:
Country: Ethiopia
Variety: Dega & Wolishu
Process: Natural
Altitude: 2110 masl

This beautiful lot comes from Chelbesa village in Ethiopia's Gedeo Zone, just south of Yirgacheffe. The cherries are grown in a semi-forest environment with rich, red soil that's perfect for coffee. The main local landraces here are Wolishu and Dhega, both well-loved for their quality and clear regional and origin traits.

Chelbesa has a reputation as a hub for coffee-farming families, with the community well known for consistently producing some of the region's finest coffees. In Gedeb, most farmers tend very small plots, often less than 2 hectares. They're so small that farmers often measure their farms not by land size, but by the number of trees on their land. Coffee in Chelbesa is grown using traditional, low-intervention methods, where it is intercropped with other food crops, grown under the shade of semi-forest vegetation, and supported by enset (false banana) plants, which help protect the soil and regulate moisture. Coffee from Chelbesa Village is organic by default, with farming practices that have been passed down through generations.

Once harvested, the cherries are taken to the Chelbesa wet mill, where processing is handled carefully and diligently. The cherries are laid out on specially constructed raised African beds designed to allow airflow and control temperature. Cherries are turned regularly to avoid over-fermentation and mould. Once a recorded moisture reading of 11.5-12% is achieved, the cherries undergo further processing, sorting by colour, density, and screen size before being milled and prepared for export.