Ethiopia Yirgacheffe 3 Natural Jemila GrainPro

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Flavor Profile Santa Rosa Plum, Watermelon, Strawberry, Candy-like Sweetness

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About this coffee

Grower

800 producers organized around the Dumerso processing station and Jemila dry mill

Altitude

1800 – 1900 masl

Variety

Indigenous heirloom cultivars

Soil

Vertisol

Region

Gedeo Zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, Ethiopia

Process

Full natural and dried on raised beds

Harvest

October - January

Certification

Fair Trade|Organic

Coffee Background

Dumerso is a private processing station located just north of the town of Yirga Chefe, in the heart of the coveted Gedeo Zone—the narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors whose coffee is known the world over as “Yirgacheffe”. The Gedeo region is named after the Gedeo people who are indigenous to this area. As a coffee terroir, Yirgacheffe has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee—known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, and seductively punchy and sweet when sundried--and hardly requires an introduction. In Ethiopia, natural coffees, once fully dried, must be milled of their coffee husk prior to transport to Addis Ababa. This is for the purpose of storage efficiency—coffee simply takes up too much space as a whole dried fruit. Jemila is a dry mill who works with the Dumerso processing station, consolidating and prepping their finished coffees for transit to Addis, and export. This particular coffee is a blend of different natural lots from Dumerso throughout harvest. The Dumerso station is owned and operated by Dirshaye Ferenju and his family. Dumerso’s contributing farmers number over 800, and average about four acres of farmland each. Their naturals are floral and syrupy, the result of careful sorting and drying routines executed to perfection throughout the dramatic temperature fluctuations of Yirgacheffe’s unique high-elevation climate. It’s a tough business being a private miller, or processor, in Gedeo. The sheer density of competition among washing stations tends to push cherry prices as high as double throughout a single harvest, and privates often don’t have the backing of a larger union to secure financing, regulate cherry prices, or bring export costs down with centralized milling and marketing. Successful private millers like Jemila need to be not only standout quality service providers to stay afloat; they must also be excellent business developers with connections and community standing, in order to continue winning the business of processors and buyers alike, and stay afloat for the long term.