Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s landscapes, quite literally, were made for growing coffee. After all, it is the birthplace of coffee. So it should come as no surprise that the country of more than 100 million people continues to be the source of some of the world’s most extraordinary coffees—coffees that taste unlike anything else on Earth.

The phrase “taste of place” took on meaning for us when we first started traveling to Ethiopia in 2005. It is partly due to the fact that Ethiopia may have the perfect growing environment, as well as more agricultural genetic diversity than the rest of the world’s coffee-growing countries combined. But our appreciation of Ethiopian coffee is also influenced by its cultural significance there.

Coffee permeates the cultural fabric of Ethiopian life, with the world’s most ancient traditions for coffee service on display every day, everywhere people live, meet, and work, from humble homes to roadside cafes to formal ceremonies. Coffee is, in many ways, the lifeblood of the entire country, and it’s remarkable to ponder how the surface of Ethiopia’s coffee potential may have only been scratched.

As a community, we have just begun the labor-intensive task of lot separation, aimed to preserve the distinctive flavors created by heirloom varieties of coffee that exist in Ethiopia and nowhere else. And there are still coffees growing wild in Ethiopia’s forests that remain unclassified, which represent a world of possibilities for the wider coffee community. Ethiopia means opportunity, equally for our co-op partners and our vast smallholders network.

So let this serve as notice to the rest of the world, which took Ethiopia’s seeds to create an industry: the original source of coffee is here to retake the throne.

About as far west as one can get in Ethiopia, just a few kilometers from the border with South Sudan, in the region known as Bench Maji, there is an incredible coffee story unfolding. High on a plateau, under the canopy of native trees, Adam Overton and Rachel Samuel Overton have planted heirloom Gesha trees from Gori Gesha seed they found growing wild in a nearby forest by the same name. This is the original Gesha, a close relative of the seeds transported to Panama more than half a century ago that set the coffee world on fire when they hit the specialty market in the early 2000s.

The place is at once both new and extremely old—the region where coffee first appeared on the earth more than 10,000 years ago. The forest is full of towering trees and incredible biodiversity. In their shadows, small rows of recently planted coffee are already thriving and being cared for using a combination of traditional methods augmented with the modern understanding of farm management. It is a farm, more than 1,100 acres in total, with unlimited potential, and the site of a beautiful revival that will likely be remembered decades from now for having written a critical new chapter in the specialty coffee saga.

Intelligentsia’s team of coffee buyers has been to hundreds of farms over the last 20 years, and we have never seen one that bears any kind of resemblance to this. There is something magical about it, and we’re certain that as Adam and his family continue to explore their newfound passion, they will help us redefine the notion of exhilarating coffee.

If Ethiopia is returning to its rightful place on coffee’s throne, then our partners at METAD are leading the process of reclamation. The family-owned operation, based in the capital, Addis Ababa, utilizes the meticulous approaches to post-harvest processing and quality control first developed in Latin America, grafting them onto Ethiopia’s unrivaled natural endowments. This unique set of factors allows METAD to produce some of the most exquisite coffee in the world.

METAD is setting new standards for quality at its washing stations, and raising the bar constantly. Their locations at Gedeb and Hambela are not far from each other as the crow flies, but they straddle the line between the Gedeo and Guji zones, giving METAD access to the very best coffees from two regions with celebrated and distinctive flavor profiles. The advanced training and technology, along with unparalleled transparency, are more reasons why METAD continues to expand its operations year after year. And its state-of-the-art quality control facility in Addis Ababa is the first private coffee lab on the continent certified by the Specialty Coffee Association.

METAD shares Intelligentsia’s unyielding belief in the power of exceptional taste to create value for everyone in the coffee chain, as well as a commitment to pursue this vision in ways that are innovative and transparent. But it is important to recognize that, from its inception in 2012, the project was founded with the understanding that METAD defines success only partly by the quality of its coffees—it is also deeply committed to improving the quality of life among farmers and workers in the communities where it sources coffee. It has invested in local schools and made a deliberate effort to create opportunities for women in its hiring practices and investments in basic reproductive health services.

Groundbreaking undertakings and a commitment to women’s inclusion aren’t new for Aman Adinew and his brothers. It’s part of the family’s heritage. Aman’s grandmother, Muluemebet Emiru, wasn’t just the first coffee grower in the family, she was also the first female pilot in Africa.