Ethiopia is an incredibly diverse coffee producing country. For the past six harvest seasons, our green buying team has focused the bulk of its energies on coffees produced by coops in the southwestern region of this beautiful, landlocked East African country. But while our Foundational Agaro partnership has rightly commanded a significant amount of our attention in recent years, it is southern Ethiopia that is home to arguably the most prized coffees produced in the birthplace of Arabica coffee. Within the South, the coffees of Yirgacheffe are beloved for their silky, nuanced, jasmine-like cup qualities, while the coffees of Guji - exhibiting a staggering array of floral, tropical, and citrusy flavors - are internationally renowned for their complexity and sweetness.

This particular lot is made up of coffees representing harvests from the Layo Teraga Coffee Producers Cooperative in Uraga, in southern Ethiopia’s Guji Zone. A longstanding farmer cooperative, Layo Teraga was founded in 1976 and has since grown to represent over 1800 smallholder farmers, many of whom grow coffee in semi-forested home gardens, at some of the highest elevations in the coffee growing world. Guji coffees have the potential to express some of the most complex and interesting cup profiles we have ever experienced. Among the myriad flavors we often find in coffees from this region is a distinct florality of bergamot, which we find in spades in this release, alongside fresh stone fruit, melon, and soft key lime acidity.