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. Halo Bariti is one of the communities East of Gedeb and includes cooperative members that are cooperative-affiliated, as well independent processing stations of various types, many of which are simply named “Halo Bariti” after the town itself. Processing in Halo Bariti Washed coffee across Halo Bariti is processed simply and with great attention to detail: fresh-picked cherry is delivered each day by contributing farmers and hand-sorted upon arrival for uniformity and ripeness. Once sorting is complete, cherry is weighed and logged, and then depulped and fermented overnight in fresh water, rinsed again with fresh water the next morning, and taken directly to raised beds to dry, a process that typically takes 12-15 days. 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 coffee's brittle parchment. Fully dried parchment is transported to Addis Ababa for final milling, bagging and export.
