As many throughout the specialty coffee world have noticed, 2024 marked a year of particularly fraught logistical challenges for coffees attempting to leave Ethiopia. Due to regional conflict and piracy in the Red Sea, many shipping companies have been forced to re-route container ships, while others ceased their operations from Ethiopian shipping ports full stop. With that in mind, Passenger, like many roasting companies, is exceedingly grateful to have fresh harvest Ethiopian coffees, arrived and in good condition. While certainly growing in prevalence in recent years, lots traceable to a single producer from Ethiopia, such as this one, have generally been a rare find. This is largely due to the unique history of the coffee trade in Ethiopia, as well as the generally small-holder nature of coffee production in Ethiopia.

In 2008, as commodity prices plummeted worldwide due to the onset of the Great Recession, Ethiopia was just beginning to launch a new way of regulating commodities exchange and exports out of Ethiopia under the establishment of a new and ambitious marketplace, called the ECX (Ethiopian Commodities Exchange). The ECX hoped to make for a more transparent and efficient marketplace, where producers of agricultural commodities, including coffee, could more readily access real-time market prices and avoid predatory auction buying that historically preyed on farmers' lack of access to such information. Shortly after the establishment of the ECX came the mandate that all coffee headed to market had to go through the ECX and its in-country warehouses. As one might expect in a country where nearly 15 million people rely on coffee production as a means of income, the ECX was quickly overwhelmed, causing coffee prices to fall yet further. While the ECX did eventually staibilize, what little traceability there had been before was lost as the ECX homogenized incoming coffee deliveries to fit broad regional and flavor profile distinctions. While there were some exceptions given to large privately owned estates and cooperatives, smallholder farmers were not allowed to own export licenses until the ECX eased its restrictions in 2017. For many such smallholder farmers interested in direct exporting, it would take a number of additional years, and risk, to find ways to enter the market.

Mullugeta Muntasha is one such farmer who, over time, has been able to process coffee for direct export, albeit in very limited quantities, using his own milling and drying infrastructure. Originally a truck driver who learned of the coffee trade while delivering coffee cherry to privately owned wet mills, Mullugeta returned to his hometown of Bursa in 2021 to start his own venture, beginning processing coffee at his personal washing station named Dawencho. Just one year later, coffee from a local farmer group that was processed at his washing station, as well as lots of his own, were awarded top prizes at the Cup of Excellence competition. In addition, his brother-in-law, Legese Botola, processed coffee at Dawencho and won first place overall. Needless to say given such early accolades, Mullugeta Muntasha has clearly created something special in his short but dedicated time as a coffee producer, and we couldn’t be more excited to be bringing his coffees to our Reserve Lot menu.