Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee is a unique USDA organic coffee with a complex origin and truly exotic flavor with pleasant acidity. Yirgacheffe is a coffee region in southern Ethiopia that produces distinctively floral and fruit-toned coffees from traditional varieties of Arabica long grown in the region from wild coffee trees. The best Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee dry-processed tends to be medium-bodied, brilliantly acidic and contains rough fruity or winy tones. We buy this coffee direct from Ethiopia to get the best crop with the best price.
Certifications:
Flavor Notes: Lemon, Blueberry, and Blackberry
Processing: Washed Process
Roast: Medium/Light Roast
Additional Information:
Hailed as the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe coffee is grown in the Gedeo zone of southern Ethiopia with an average growing altitude of 2000 meters above sea level. Ethiopia Yirgacheffe coffee is recognized as some of the most unique, distinctive Ethiopian coffees, with notes of floral citrus and a clean mouthfeel that exemplifies why the Yirgacheffe growing region is so lauded within the coffee community.
Ethiopia Yirgacheffe is at the epicenter of coffee within the Sidoma Region of Ethiopia and produces nearly a billion pounds of coffee per year. Ethiopian coffee was first exported from the country in the 1600’s, before slowly waning due to coffee demand primarily being met by countries like Yemen and Java, which were a lot closer to ports in the colonial trade routes. But Ethiopian coffee was rediscovered with revamped curiosity in the 19th century for producing high quality, consistent coffee crops, emblematic of Ethiopian coffee’s Strictly Hard Beans (SHB) and Strictly High Grown (SHG) coffee that naturally occur within Ethiopia’s high altitudes that infuse the beans with nutrients from the soil and translates to a fruity tasting body with floral aromas.
Yirgacheffe coffee farmers are a part of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers’ Cooperative Union (YCFCU), which represents over 45,000 small-holder farmers within the Ethiopian coffee industry and 28 cooperatives, and whose mission is to “promote and support the continuous development of sustainable coffee supply” within Ethiopia Yirgacheffe coffee growing areas. First established in 2002 as a political ally for small-holder farmers within Yirgacheffe, the YCFCU helped combat increasing government antagonism and championed the Yirgacheffe farmers’ ability to thrive at the end of the socialist system within Ethiopia that left many farmers disenfranchised going into the 20th-century.
During the mid-2000’s, the global coffee supply chain suffered major shocks to the price of coffee, in which not even Ethiopian coffee, despite its quality, was immune to, and made it difficult for farmers all over the world to make ends meet. Though the YCFCU helped support local farmers in the region to maintain a stable source of income through empowered bargaining capabilities within the supply chain that allowed Yirgacheffe coffee and its farmers to blossom into the premiere source of great specialty coffee.
Not satisfied with being the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe also happens to be the birthplace of the first wet processing mill back in the 1970s that utilizes a washing method of soaking the coffee cherries in vats of water once picked, until they are cleaned and then rotated and dried on elevated beds until they are ready to be bagged. The end result creates a consistent, quality flavor that has a cleaner mouthfeel with notes of citrus and berries that Ethiopian coffees are known for.
The Ethiopia Yirgacheffe region continues to be known for its high standards in coffee growing, harvesting primarily Heirloom varieties, and with a higher percentage of farmers are fair trade certified than most regions. In this new century, Ethiopia Coffee Yirgacheffe farmers continue to tap into their heritage and traditions of coffee growing to exemplify what’s not only special about Ethiopian coffee but what’s special about specialty coffee.