Ethiopia.
The place coffee was first noticed.
Ethiopia is the genetic home of arabica coffee. Every heirloom cultivar you see on a bag label — and every bag that doesn't specify a cultivar at all — descends from trees still growing wild in the highlands here.
What this means in the cup is a category of aromatic intensity you don't find anywhere else. Jasmine, bergamot, stone fruit, tea-like body. The washing stations in Yirgacheffe produce the clearest expression of this; the smaller stations in Guji and Sidamo often surprise us.
We buy from cooperatives, not estates, for the same reason most honest roasters do: the smallholder model here is genuinely better organised, pays pickers more consistently, and produces more reliable quality than the estate model.
