Ethiopia Basha Bekele Natural

Story

This rich Ethiopian heirloom coffee opens with aromas of canned peach, brown sugar, and lychee. Notes of raisin, walnut, and peach cobbler are balanced by grilled lemon acidity and a round body. Blackcurrant and cedar notes linger in the finish.

This lot is Crop to Cup's first import from Basha Bekele:

We visited Basha’s Bombe drying station on our second day in Bensa last December. Basha’s father was once a manager for a co-op in Bombe that supplied coffee to the Sidama Union. Before the government made it possible for smallholders to obtain export licenses, both he and his father sold their cherry to the cooperative. Basha now has his own export license and grows coffee (primarily 74158, known locally as “Walega”) in semi-forested plots on 12 hectares in addition to operating collection sites in Bombe, Shantawane, and Kokose—collecting cherry from producers growing coffee as high as 2,300 masl.

While cherry prices were high this year, Basha maintained a practice we didn’t see everywhere: delivering a second payment to the 126 producers he bought cherry from once the coffee sold. Like most smallholders around Bensa, Basha exclusively produces dry processes—which includes experiments with anaerobic styles of fermentation—and floats cherries to remove defects before drying his coffee slowly on raised beds.