Ethiopia - Chelchele Yirgacheffe

This coffee comes from the Chelchele washing station, located in the kebele (village) of Chelchele, Kochere district, in the Yirgacheffe region.

In Ethiopia, coffee trees are generally grown on very small plots by farmers who also grow other crops. Most farmers deliver their coffee cherries to a nearby washing station or central processing plant, where the coffee is sorted, weighed and paid for. The coffee is then processed, usually washed or natural, by the washing station and dried on raised beds.

The washing stations serve several hundred, if not a thousand, producers, who deliver cherries throughout the harvest season. The mixing of these cherries in daily batches makes it virtually impossible, under normal circumstances, to know exactly which coffee ends up in which bag on which day, making it difficult to trace them back to the producer.

However, we do try to source our coffee from the same washing stations
every year, thanks to our export partners and their relationships with the washing stations.

As a general rule, farmers in this region do not have access to fertilisers and pesticides and therefore do not use them for coffee production.