The Guji zone is vastly under-represented in terms of processing capacity compared to nearby Gedeo or Sidama zones. Like most of southern Ethiopia, Guji is naturally gifted, heavily forested, and has coffee growing at staggeringly high elevations relative to the rest of the world. This is a natural processed coffee from one of Tracon Trading’s processing sites in the Uraga district, in the western part of Guji Zone, which borders parts of central Gedeo zone (Yirgacheffe).
Welcome to Guji
Ethiopia’s Guji zone is a distant and heavily forested swath of land stretching southeast through the lower corner of the massive Oromia region. Guji is heavy with primary forest thanks to the Guji tribe, a part of Ethiopia’s vast and diverse Oromo nation, who have for generations organized and legislated to reduce mining and logging outfits in their area, in a struggle to conserve the land’s sacred canopy. Compared to other coffee-heavy regions, large parts of Guji feel like prehistoric backwoods. Coffee farms in many parts of Guji begin at 2000 meters in elevation and tend to climb from there. The highland farming communities in this part of the country can be at turns Edenic in their natural purity, and startlingly remote.
Guji’s coffees, when well-produced, are often juicier and jammier in balance than nearby Yirgacheffe, which is known for more floral or herbaceous and lemony coffees. High elevation naturals here in particular can be well-defined and hard candy-like in balance with flavors of berry or stone fruit, red wine, and rose.
Uraga Suke Processing Station and Processing
The Uraga Suke processing station is owned and operated by Tracon Coffee, an independent exporter who manages various processing sites throughout southern Ethiopia.
Naturals at Uraga Suke are processed simply and with great attention to detail. Fresh-picked cherry is delivered to the station each day by contributing farmers. On arrival the cherry is hand-sorted and washed, to ensure the station is only accepting uniform ripeness and cleanliness. Once sorting is complete, cherry is weighed and logged, and moved directly to raised beds to dry, a process that can take 8-25 days depending on the weather—which can fluctuate in temperate quite a lot being a forested environment at such high altitude. During the drying period the coffee is constantly rotated during the day and covered at night to prevent the area’s humidity from settling on the cherry’s skin. Fully dried cherry pods are then stored for multiple weeks to stabilize moisture content and water activity, then hulled locally and transported to Addis Ababa for final milling and export.
