This is our first year working with coffees from one of the Kata Muduga Cooperative’s newer stations: Gore Dako. This station is ideally centered in some of the best coffee growing lands in western Ethiopia. In the cup we find candied lemon, wildflower honey, and peach.
Ethiopian Landrace
Agaro Gera
2,100 masl
January, 2022
Hand picked at peak ripeness. Floated to further remove defects. Depulped on a Penagos eco-pulper on the day of harvest. Soaked overnight. Dried on raised beds.
Gore Dako opened for its first harvest season in the fall of 2019. It is located in the southern end of Agaro Gera, in the middle of the same forest as some of the most famous Ethiopian washing stations, such as Kolla Bolcha and Biftu Gudina. This site is also very close to the border of Goma, and the home of Duromina and Hunda Oli. Coffees from this particular area are exquisitely clean, and some of the most sought after coffees world wide. Gore Dako is also part of the famous Kata Muduga Cooperative, and a product of the TechnoServe project—which focuses on improving the lives of African coffee farmers by helping them get better prices for their coffee. It is, without question, one of the most successful development projects within specialty coffee.
Ethiopia is widely acknowledged as where coffee originated, and its production continues to represent about 10% of the country’s gross domestic product. DNA testing has confirmed over 60 distinct varieties growing in Ethiopia, making it home to the most coffee biodiversity of any region in the world. Given the tradition of coffee production in Ethiopia and the political interworkings of the Ethiopian coffee trade, it is virtually impossible to get single variety coffee lots from Ethiopia. This is changing, albeit very slowly. Most Ethiopian coffees are blends of the many Ethiopian varieties, and referred to simply as 'Ethiopian Landrace'.
The cost of getting a coffee from cherry to beverage varies enormously depending on its place of origin and the location of its consumption. The inclusion of price transparency is a starting point to inform broader conversation around the true costs of production and the sustainability of specialty coffee as a whole.