The Sidama zone is one of Ethiopia's most productive, supplying over 40% of the entire country's washed coffee to its central market. Compared to Yirgacheffe, further south, Sidama is a sprawling and varied landscape that transitions from the Great Rift Valley to beyond 2000 meters in elevation. The Dara "woreda", or district, is one of Sidama's easternmost areas, and one of its highest. Some of the region's best washed coffees are produced here.
Dara Washing Station
Despite have a robust cooperative presence, Sidama is also home to many independent processors and exporters. The Dara washing station is one of these independent sites, owned and managed by Siz Agro PLC, a private exporter with a handful of processing stations throughout southern Ethiopia.
Siz Agro’s Dara station is just a few kilometers north of Dilla, close to Sidama’s border with Gedeo zone and off the main autoroute that goes from Addis Ababa to Ethiopia’s southern coffeelands. Farmers delivering cherry to Dara average 1.5 hectares each and intercrop coffee with food crops and enset, a fruitless relative of the banana tree whose inner pulp is scraped, fermented underground, and toasted as a staple dietary starch.
Washed lots at Dara are fermented slowly—24 to 48 hours—due to the low ambient temperatures in the high elevation region and the replenishment of cold groundwater throughout the process. Once fermentation is complete, the wet parchment is washed clean and transported to raised screen beds to dry, a process that takes 12-15 days to complete. Drying parchment is covered during the midday hours when the overhead sun is searing hot, as well as overnight to prevent the encroaching humidity from settling on the coffee.
