This coffee comes from smallholders in the Chelchele area, part of the Gedeb district in southern Gedeo Zone, where some of Ethiopia’s most complex and aromatic naturals come from year after year.
Gedeb is a unique area dense with coffee growers and processors. The coffee was processed at a central site in Banko Gotiti, one of the district’s most prolific coffee areas. Gedeb's Significance and Coffee Profiles The district of Gedeb takes up the south-eastern corner of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone—a narrow section of plateau dense with savvy farmers whose coffee is known as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous district. Gedeb, however, is a terroir, history, and community all its own that merits unique designation in our eyes. Coffees from this community, much closer to Guji Zone than the rest of Yirgacheffe, are often the most explosive cup profiles we see from anywhere in Ethiopia. Naturals tend to have perfume-like volatiles, and fully washed lots are often sparklingly clean and fruit candy-like in structure. The municipality of Gedeb itself is a is a bustling outpost that links commerce between the Guji and Gedeo Zones, with an expansive network of processing stations who buy cherry from across zone borders. These processors (and we would agree) would argue their coffee profiles are not exactly Yirgacheffe, but something of their own. The communities surrounding Gedeb reach some of the highest growing elevations for coffee in the world and are a truly enchanting part of the long drive into Guji. Banko Gotiti is one of the communities in eastern Gedeb and includes numerous local cooperatives, as well as independent processing stations of various types, like this one. EDN Ethiopian Coffee EDN Ethiopian Coffee is an independent processor and exporter of coffee with processing sites in Guji, southern Yirgacheffe, and Sidama. The coffee was processed at the group’s site in Banko Gotiti, one of Gedeb’s most prolific coffee producing areas. The Banko Gotiti site employs over 200 people during harvest months to manage the continuous rotating and sorting of sundried cherry and parchment, as well as all other intake, payment, security, and inventory operations. Being a processor for EDN is much more than transactional—they prefinance all their contributing farmers, provide educational resources, daily meals and lodging for staff. Amenities like these are both a gesture of care and acknowledgment of the potential instability inherent to smallscale farming. They are also strategic, since many processors in the area compete for farmer loyalty, and important for the sustainability of coffee and its workforce in the area. Processing at Banko Gotiti Naturals at the Banko Gotiti station are received as fresh-picked cherry on a daily basis throughout harvest. Cherry is sorted for defects and moved immediately to raised beds to dry. For 2-4 weeks the cherry is rotated continuously in the sun until they have sufficiently dried. Once fully dried, the cherry pods are moved to a cool, indoor storage environment to rest and condition—a process where moisture balances across the coffee and water activity stabilizes, to help lock in the coffee’s flavors for a long shelf life.
