Ethiopia - Rumudamo Natural [24/25]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Influence: Super light, bright, fast roasting, chasing good structure, acidity presentation and florals.

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks (atleast!)

Filter: 62g/L, 96°C when fresh but when well rested you can go down to 92-93°C

Espresso: 18g/48g/20-23s. Can also work as a turbo/soup

We’re tasting: Perfumed florals - wild roses, honeysuckle & yuzu. In the hot cup we're finding ripe raspberry, bergamot jelly, strawberry gummies and a sparkling effervescent body + acidity - much akin to fizzy lemon sherbert. Super clean and juicy, the raspberry, yuzu and rose are distinct and characterful on cool in this highly energetic coffee, with a long tail of elderflower cordial.

Traceability:

The Story

While the first container from Atrie made it out in time - a 20ft container, direct shipped to the UK, the second was not so lucky. A shortage of containers (with many exporters reported to be hoarding them!) saw delayed shipments, and the geopolitical crisis caused by the awful events in the middle easts saw the Houthis continue attacks in the red sea - right at the peak Ethiopia natural shipping season (June/July). 

Atrie booked a 40ft container (twice as much coffee!) and we had to deal with waiting for a few transhipments along the way, which meant we launched Bekele's coffee first, due to landing a smidge earlier.

We're on the Rumudamo as one of our penultimate lots for the year, and we've increased our volume to allow this beautiful coffee to run for longer. What a fantastic harvest it's been from Ethiopia this season - a real one for the ages

Rumudamo, Daye Bensa & Coffee Legends:

We’ve made a commitment to try and work with producer owned value chains wherever possible. This means that those that grow the coffee, also manage the exporting and importing process ensuring that the maximum value for our purchase is returned upstream. This means both working with smaller independent outfits, as well as larger operations. 

Daye Bensa was founded by two brothers - Asefa and Mulugeta in 1996, setting up a farm and washing station in the Bensa region of Sidama. Initially only selling internally (as Ethiopia has a strong internal market for coffee - around 50% of what is grown in Ethiopia never leaves its borders), in 2006 they started exporting coffee internationally. Since then, Daye Bensa has grown to be one of the top 5 largest international exporters by volume (and most assuredly higher by quality!) in Ethiopia, but still to this day family owned and based in-country. 

Atrie from Coffee Legends is Asefa’s brother in law - having worked as a manager for Daye Bensa, with a stint in finance in the UK, he took the leap to set up a UK import office for Daye Bensa. Atrie’s mission is to specifically highlight and promote the Arbegona region of Sidama - a relatively youthful area for coffee production. 

Arbegona represents an interesting example of the future of coffee - but perhaps not as we would like to see. It is no secret that Arabica coffee trees are fussy plants - even in their native Ethiopia, they have a defined climactic range in which they flourish. They thrive best with daytime temperatures no higher than 25-30c, with a cooler nighttime temperature. As global and local temperatures crank ever upwards, coffee production in lower altitudes is in crisis - the heat stress diminishing yields, increasing susceptibility to disease and insect damage, and when we consider cup attributes, hotter temps lead to rapid cherry maturation and poor quality. Slowly but surely lower altitude regions no longer become suitable for growing coffee as the global temps rise.

Arbegona is an example of the counter-point of this - as temperatures rise and lower altitude areas become unsuitable, regions that were previously too high and too cold for production become viable. Arbegona is home to higher elevations than the surrounding classic woredas of Sidama, elevations that common wisdom over 30 years ago would have said no coffee would grow. But as temperatures rise, farmers have had success growing extremely high altitude coffee - some of the highest grown in the world. 

Unlike other regions with longer histories, the majority of coffee production in Arbegona is recent plantings, mostly Jimma Agricultural Centre improved cultivars (as opposed to a mixture of JARC and local selected landraces). This means we can be very confident in discussing which varieties have built the lot, and we see a more defined flavour profile from the 3 JARC varieties typically planted in the region. Secondly, the extremely high altitude is still not completely conquered by the rising climates - cooler nights ensure that cherry maturation is a slow process, and often the cherries themselves are incredibly small. Dense, tiny beans but packed full of intensity and flavour from the conditions. It’s no wonder when you combine this with quality focused protocols and processing that Arbegona is quickly picking up a reputation for top, top quality production, a reputation to rival the most storied kebeles.

But it’s tinged with mourning - while we gain access to new regions inside the motherland of coffee, with incredible and distinct profiles, the lingering thought always returns - what happens when “low altitude conditions” cover the majority of the coffee lands across the globe, and there are no more mountains to climb?