$12.75 Each

Sumo Orange, Crisp, Black Tea, Tropical

Location: Gedeo Zone

Varietal: Karume, Mixed Heirloom

Process: Washed

Elevation: 1950-2150 masl

Our Third year buying Reko, and couldn’t be more excited about it. Kinda like when you were 19 and you scored some mickeys 40’s from a dude selling them on a Sunday out of the back of his El Camino in the K-Mart parking lot. Although it tastes much better than malt liquor, it will still give you that feeling of scoring huge for your taste. You got that classical tea like profile with florals, and then you get some intense citrus and a clean finish. Hailing from one of our favorite areas of Ethiopia as well. Below is some deeper info for your mind.

Located in prime coffee land (and less than 5 km from the town of Yirgacheffe), the washing station is in reach of several coffee-growing communities – Aricha, Reko, Gersi, Naga Singage, and Idido. Everything is perfect for coffee here – the farmer community is experienced, the soil is fertile, the mountains and forests provide the ideal microclimate – and yet the Aricha washing station was left to decay, never reaching even a fraction of its potential.

Enter Faysel Abdosh and Testi Coffee. Faysel comes from a family of coffee growers, and he knows what good coffee is. In fact, his first endeavor as a young man was finding good coffee and bringing it to coffee buyers in his native Harar region.

Recognizing the potential of the coffee-growing communities in the area and seeing the need for a high-quality washing station there, he did not hesitate when he heard the Aricha site was available for sale. Testi Coffee took over the site around 2018 and immediately got to work reviving the washing station – a formidable task.

The first year was tough, as much needed to be done, but all the arduous work has paid off. Aricha now ranks as one of Testi’s smoothest operating washing stations. The farming communities around the station no longer must travel far to sell their cherries and are quite happy to work with the Aricha washing station. While the washing station does not process each farmer’s lot separately, it does process each farming community’s lot separately. As a result, traceability extends a step further than the Aricha washing station and into the communities surrounding it.

Pretty much all the farmers in this area are from southern Ethiopia’s Gedeo ethnic group. They have lived in this area for as long as anyone can remember and have grown coffee here commercially since at least the 1920s. They are experienced farmers who usually farm on small, family-owned plots of land rarely exceeding two hectares in area. These “home gardens” are also home to staple crops and indigenous forest trees and experts believe they have helped preserve the region’s plant diversity. Gedeo farmers usually tend their fields with the help of their wives and children.