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 neighboring 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. This fully washed lot, from smallholders in the Shantawene village, is fragrant, juicy, and sweet with berry and stone fruit flavors, honeysuckle florals and sweetened Earl Grey tea.
Welcome to Eastern Sidama
The Sidama Zone has long been considered a kind of gateway to Ethiopia’s southern coffees. This is geographically 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 & Boreta Village
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 is a centrally processed coffee from 940 smallholders in the Shantawene village, part of the Bensa district. Growers here are at an average of 2,500 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 depulped,and the parchment is fermented slowly—36 to 48 hours—due to the low ambient temperatures in the region and the replenishment of cold groundwater throughout the process. Drying takes 12-15 days and wet parchment is often covered during the searingly-hot afternoon hours to prevent it from cracking.
Once complete, dried parchment is conditioned in local warehouses before being transported to Daye Bensa’s Addis Ababa dry milling facility, where it is cleaned, sorted, and prepped for export.
