Truly a story of local entrepreneurship, this superlatively fragrant and sweet coffee came to be through a producer group founded by Bensa district natives in 1996. The Bensa and Arbegona districts reach some of the highest elevations in all of Ethiopia; in the right hands, coffee grown here has proven capable of pushing the limits of what Sidama coffee genetics can show us. Welcome to Eastern Sidama The Sidama Zone has long been considered a kind of gateway to Ethiopia’s southern coffees. This is true, as Sidama is the first producing zone on the way south from Addis Ababa. It has also been true in the cup: Sidama has been known for having a robust and stable union of more than 50 coops that turn out predictably honey-like, herbaceous fully washed coffee year after year, and almost always with earlier availability and lower prices than neighboring Gedeo (a.k.a. “Yirgacheffe”). Perhaps because of its stability, the sprawling zone has also seen little disruption to its union presence and hallmark washed profiles. It is in Sidama’s eastern districts of Bensa and Arbegona that the zone has spent the past few years reinventing itself, one innovative group at a time. For the past four harvests, we have seen several private processors turn out incredible coffees that reset our expectations for Sidama. Some have used transformative anaerobic fermentations, whereas others, like this one, are nothing more than sound traditional washed processing fundamentals applied to a select subset of the region’s coffee—some of the highest and most genetically gifted on the planet. Coffees this good wouldn’t be possible without a divine terroir to begin with. Eastern Sidama runs up against the mighty Harenna Forest National Park, Ethiopia’s largest indigenous forest, whose elevation surpasses 3,000 meters and whose old growth tree species can be found across eastern Sidama, whose presence boosts natural shade and soil health. Were this not enough, the elevation alone is enough to make a coffee buyer’s eyes water, with coffee farms as high as 2300 meters above sea level. Harvest here pushes past the end of the calendar year. Daye Bensa Coffee Export PLC Daye Bensa is one of the entrepreneurial groups pushing Sidama’s coffee to new levels. Originally founded in 1996 by two brothers from the Bensa district, the organization now operates 2 of its own large estates and manages over 15 processing stations in eastern Sidama. This lot is centrally processed coffee from smallholders in the Mirado community, just outside of Daye Bensa town. Growers here are at an average of 2,000 meters in elevation, farming entirely on small, diversified plots typically devoted to coffee, sugar cane, spices, subsistence vegetables, and enset—a fruit-less relative of the banana tree whose pulp is scraped and packed into cakes, fermented underground, and then sliced and toasted as kocho, a staple starch. Processing begins with fresh picked cherry that is floated for density and hand-sorted to remove any imperfections. Cherry is then taken directly to raised screen beds to dry. Drying takes 12-15 days and the cherry pods are often covered during the searingly-hot afternoon hours to prevent them from cracking. Once complete, dried pods are conditioned in local warehouses before being hulled locally and then transported to Daye Bensa’s Addis Ababa dry milling facility, where they are cleaned, sorted, and prepped for export.
