The road south out of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia leads straight to coffee country. The new highway toll road makes travel to the lowlands quicker than ever, but the pace slows down when the road starts to climb into the mountains. At Shashamane town, the western road carries travelers into the heart of the Sidamo Guji coffee region, past family farms and pointed huts made of curved reeds.
Thousands of small farmers live in this area, growing coffee at high altitudes where the Rift Valley meets the Bale Mountains. Farms range in size from 1 to 20 hectares, and banana and mango trees grow alongside coffee trees, imparting their fruity flavors into the soil. For hundreds of years, people here have governed by the Gadaa system, an indigenous democratic process of electing a leader and local representatives.
A sub-region of Sidamo, and tucked in between Yirgacheffe and Sidamo, Guji is rich in history and rich in coffee. Guji coffee has received lots of attention from the specialty coffee world in recent years, and for good reason. Many privately-owned washing stations have sprung up recently in this area that traditionally processed coffee using a natural (dry) method. The quality of these washed coffees can be outstanding. Not surprising, considering the area’s close proximity to Yirgacheffe, which has perfected the washed process. The people of the Guji region take pride in the high quality of this sweet, clean coffee.
In the case of this particular lot of coffee, growers bring their ripe coffee cherry to the Biru Bekele washing station. Here, the cherries are pulped and washed with mountain spring water the same day. The pulped coffee goes into a fermentation tank for 72 hours, then is washed, spread, and sun-dried for up to 2 weeks on raised beds. Biru Bekele's coffee journey began in 2005, and for nearly 20 years they have been actively involved in coffee exports. The washing station was established in 2018, which has contributed greatly to the quality of the region’s coffee processing.