Nafkot Admasu, at 38 years old, is considered very young in Ethiopia, where the average age of a coffee farmer is still somewhere in the 60s. She is a mother of 3 and the owner of a 2-hectare farm—miniscule by global standards but well above average for her part of Ethiopia.
This is only Nafkot’s 3rd harvest but the coffee is ready to stand alone. Her coffee this year is a super crisp, punchy and bright natural with a syrupy sweetness evocative of cherry pie filling, and soft but brisk aromatics of pink peppercorn and citrus peel.
It’s incredible to have a 2-hectare farm microlot from anywhere on Earth, and we shouldn’t let ourselves take this for granted just because Ethiopia produces so many great naturals. Nafkot’s coffee, given her size, is extremely unlikely to ever make it to market on its own. While single farmer coffees are becoming more accessible in Ethiopia, most of them are viable because they are 10-plus hectares in size with ample cherry drying space. Nafkot, on the other hand, is not much different than a typical smallholder.
Nafkot’s exporter, Ephtah Specialty Coffee, deserves a strong shout out too. Ephtah is women founded and owned, and while they are focused on the best microregions in Yirgacheffe, they’re particularly focused on the women farmers within them. Ephtah is an inspirational group who seems to know exactly what they want: the best coffees, and as many individual women farmers as they can promote.
Welcome to Yirgacheffe
Without question, Yirgacheffe’s notoriety is thanks to its consistently incredible expression of the coveted Gedeo Zone terroir. No single part of Yirgacheffe is more celebrated than the small area surrounding the town of Yirga Chefe itself, in the heart of Gedeo. (Indeed, Gedeo’s coffee is often known the world over simply 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 among coffee roasters, many of whom would count Yirgacheffe as one of the terroirs that led them into their profession. To many of us, the communities surrounding the town of Yirga Chefe epitomizes Ethiopia’s ideal brisk and floral profile when washed, and intense perfumey fruit when dried as a natural.
Nafkot Admasu & Processing
Nafkot is a married mother of 3 whose husband also helps with the farm. Her 2-hectare farm resembles many others in the area, planted primarily with coffee and interplanted with enset, a fruitless relative of the banana tree whose inner pulp is fermented and toasted as a local staple starch.
Despite such a small farm Nafkot employs 80 different people during harvest to help with all picking and, particularly, drying. Cherry on the farm is picked frequently during the harvest months. All cherry is first carefully inspected for ripeness and uniformity, washed clean, and then moved immediately to one of the farm’s few raised drying beds. Depending on the immediate climate, drying can take anywhere from 10-20 days, during which time the cherry is constantly rotated to ensure even dehydration.
Ephtah Specialty Coffee
Nafkot works exclusively with Ephtah Specialty Coffee, a newly founded exporter managed by Wubit Bekele and a small team of other ambitious and talented women with many years of coffee industry experience between them. Wubit was raised in Nekempte, a well-known coffee area, and after working many years for a large exporter as a university graduate, decided to start her own company. Ephtah has relationship-based sourcing now in West Arsi, Sidama, Gedeo, and Guji zones, ranging from central processors to single farmers like Nafkot with only a couple hectares of land.
Ephtah’s sustainability is focused on interpersonal strength and includes the following pillars: women inclusion and empowerment; community engagement; and boosting production and improving quality. Women, especially, are recognized by Ephtah as the “underappreciated pillar” of Ethiopia’s coffee industry, who deserve to be competitive in the industry, profitable, and who should be thriving in a way that inspires young women to start their own businesses. To this end, growers like Nafkot serve as local liaisons for Ephtah, linking interested growers to Ephtah and their women-centered business model.
