This is a smallholder-grown coffee processed centrally by Feysel Abamecha, in the gesha district of the Keffa zone. Gesha and its immediate surrounding forests is considered the original area where the arabica genus is thought to have evolved. This is a lesser-known part of Ethiopia’s modern coffee landscape but no less gifted than the rest of the country’s southern zones, including Sidama to the east and Gedeo and Guji to the south. Keffa Zone Keffa zone sits southwest of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa and sits more or less even with the Sidama zone, not far to Keffa's east. Like much of coffee-growing Ethiopia, Keffa is a broad, sloping plateau of indescribable fertility and drastically high elevations. Here, coffee is produced both by smallholders and, increasingly, on large more modern coffee estates—similar in makeup to the Guji zone. The Gesha area in particular has a legendary role in modern specialty coffee, as it was supposedly here that certain wild arabica samples were first extracted, which would appear decades later in Panama, astound quality judges, and earn its namesake “geisha” or “gesha” cultivar. Panama Gesha, as it’s well-known now, has been setting price records at the Best of Panama auction for almost 20 years since it was first isolated in Panama’s Boquete region. Feysel Abamech’s Processing Station This coffee is produced by various smallholder farmers throughout the Gesha region. Farms here range from very small to 20 hectares or more and are usually highly diversified between coffee and subsistence crops, vegetables, livestock, and enset, a fruitless relative of the banana plant whose inner pulp is fermented underground, toasted, and consumed as a staple starch. Feysel’s station is independent—not a member of any local cooperative union or shareholder group. EDN Coffee Export PLC partners with top processors like Feysel, financing the station’s operations, managing quality and export logistics, and marketing the coffees to the international market. Cherries are retrieved throughout the harvest day by collectors for the processing station who circulate in the farmers’ area. All deliveries are hand-sorted for ripeness and consistency prior to acceptance and are then delivered to the processing station for intake. Naturals here can take 2-4 weeks to dry thanks to the cold and humid nights during harvest, and throughout the day cherry is rotated constantly to prevent damage from both settling moisture and the searing mid-day heat. EDN Coffee Export PLC EDN’s founder, Michael Gebreselassie, spent many years living in the United States (and working at the Port of Oakland, one of the busiest coffee ports in the country) and watching the popularity of Ethiopia’s coffee continue to grow. Feeling certain that the supply chain could be improved at the farm level, Michael founded EDN in 2018. Despite being a young company, EDN has already begun investigating novel processing equipment and techniques. The company is experimenting with an electronic color sorter for precise cherry selection, something that has existed as a prototype for a number of years but has yet to really penetrate into the producer industry. In addition, the company is working with honey processing and anaerobic fermentation techniques across their processing sites, continuously chasing a portfolio of coffee profiles they believe will best serve their farmers and help the industry achieve new ideals.
