In the highlands of Yirgacheffe, coffee grows wild. We trace the roots of our most expressive single-origin back to the cooperative that started it all.
Ethiopia is where coffee was born. The Kaffa region, the wild forests, the heirloom varieties that have never been selectively bred — this is coffee in its most original form. When you taste a natural process Yirgacheffe, you're tasting something close to what coffee was before the world got involved.
The Yirgacheffe cooperative works with hundreds of smallholder farmers across the highlands. Each family delivers cherry at peak ripeness. The cooperative does the rest — natural process, raised beds, careful sorting. The result is one of the most complex, expressive coffees on earth.
We visited in February. The cherry harvest was just ending. The raised beds stretched across the hillside, coffee drying in the high-altitude sun. We tasted through 12 lots and selected one.