Description

Yirgacheffee Kochere, Ethiopia sourced from Bespoke who source from Haile Selassie Ambaye.

Ethiopia and its famous region

Ethiopia is widely believed to be where the coffee species arabica was originally found. Genetically it has been traced to Western Ethiopia and Southern Sudan.

From trade with the Arab nations, pure Arabica based coffees became a valuable crop. As a result, the rest of Ethiopia started growing coffee and has been doing so since the mid 1500’s.

One of the great things about Ethiopian coffees is the complete mix of varieties. An estimated of between six thousand and ten thousand varieties exist naturally in these highlands. Cross-pollination of genetics is totally amazing. So much so that there are more varieties of arabica in heirloom coffee in Ethiopia than there are in the rest of the world.

Of all the famous coffee growing regions in Ethiopia; Yirga Cheffe (or Yirgacheffe or Yirga Ch’ef?) has become well known for its quality and bright citric aromatics with distinctive lemon. Consequently the Yirga Cheffe growing region is to the east of Lake Abaya in the south of Ethiopia.

About Yirgacheffee Kochere, Ethiopia

Quaffee has always been eager to source better and better coffee from Yirgacheffee, Ethiopia. In so much as it was one of the first coffees we came across that was quite special. Hence we are keen to always offer a good representative from the region. Most noteworthy is in this case we have a traceable coffee. Haile Sellassie Ambaye run their own washing stations. So they handle the coffee from buying from the farmer through to processing and final milling. An arrangement with ECX allows transparency in the process. So each Q1 coffee form a washing station can be sold under that micro-regions name. Rather a-typical for Ethiopia where normally all coffee from the thousands of washing stations are normally bulk lotted and then just sold as Yirgacheffee.

Notably the Kochere micro region has long been known as one of the best origins for fully washed southern Ethiopian coffee. A combination of very high altitude and iron rich, acidic soil creates the ideal growing situation to produce the bright, floral Yirgacheffe profile.

We visited the Haile Sellassie Ambaye mill (you can see a video of it below:).

The coffee has lively, intense citrus with a crisp mouth-feel and floral and white grape flavours.