Background 

Washed coffees from Shakiso are delicate, sweet-savory and floral, with fresh berry flavors and subtle brown sugars. Grade 2 coffees from here will be refined and focused in flavor and highly consistent cup to cup. Shakiso is in central Guji, surrounded by old growth forests and coffee producers that range from very small family farms to vast modern coffee estates. 

Welcome to Guji 

There are few entrances to Guji--a distant and heavily forested swath of land stretching southeast through the lower corner of the massive Oromia region--and none of these routes are short, or for the queasy, in any way. Guji is heavy with primary forest thanks to the Guji tribe, a part of Ethiopia’s vast and diverse Oromo nation, who have for generations organized to reduce mining and logging outfits where they can, in a struggle to conserve the land’s sacred canopy.  

And yet the unmatched natural surroundings can be a hardship for smaller farmers bringing coffee to market. The majority of the zone can be a full day’s drive (or many days’ walk) from the nearest trading centers of Gedeb or Dilla to the west, which often leaves many coffee farmers with few options, and resulting cherry prices often as low as half of neighboring Gedeo or Sidama zones. As a result the gorgeous arabica genetics of this area, blessed by some of the country’s healthiest biodiversity, can be depleted in transit, or unfairly blended by low quality collectors with the ability to travel. 

Processing in Central Guji 

Like elsewhere in Ethiopia, smallholder coffee is best serviced by locally available central processing sites. This often comes in the form of larger estates working with surrounding smallholders to process on site, blending the production of each together in a final, harmonious coffee that showcases the best of this micro-region. Fully washed processing involves cherry collection and immediate depulping, fermenting in open tanks over night, washing clean with fresh water the next morning, and then moving to raised screen tables to dry. While drying the parchment is rotated continuously by large teams of processing staff to ensure even drying, while also making sure to remove any further defects in the overall batch. Once dried, parchment coffee is stored locally in cool warehouses and then later trucked north to Addis Ababa for final milling and bagging for export.