Ethiopia - Guji | Suke Quto Grade 1 | Fully Washed | Light Roast

Organic Ethiopia Guji | Suke Quto - Grade 1 | Fully Washed | Light Roast

Flavor Profile

Luxuriously balanced, highlights of orange and bergamot enveloped by full cocoa, black tea and jasmine noted body. Coffee that highlights the Guji region's high-elevation and fertile soil.

Origin: Oromia, Guji Zone

• Roast: Light   
• Producer: Tesfaye Bekele, Suke Quto Farm
• Certifications: Organic & Rainforest Alliance
• Process: Fully Washed - Grade 1
• Elevation: 1800-2200 meters
• Varieties: Kurume and Welicho
• Roasted fresh. Shipped Direct.

The Farm Story (of all farm stories)-

After 9 straight years of proudly sourcing and roasting this gem, this is still our favorite story: an agronomist turned organic specialty coffee pioneer. In the late 1990s, while Tesfaye Bekele was working for the government in natural resource protection, a series of devastating bushfires destroyed thousands of acres of forest in Guji. Locals began planting corn and teff on the cleared land, accelerating soil erosion.

Tesfaye tried to convince neighboring farmers to plant coffee and shade trees instead, distributing seedlings as a path to both income and reforestation. When they balked at the four-to-five-year wait for the first meaningful harvest and returned the seedlings, he realized he would have to prove it himself. He knew full well how much work coffee entailed—he had grown up with it—so it was with some reluctance that he left his life in Addis Ababa, resigned his government post, reserved a small plot of land, started a nursery, and founded Suke Quto around 2000.

Today the farm spans hundreds of hectares of sustainable agroforestry, and more than 150 neighboring outgrowers deliver organic cherry to his mill. What began as a stubborn demonstration project has become one of the defining specialty coffee enterprises of the Guji region, complete with a community school project that we’ve supported over the years.

Grown at 6,000 feet (1,800 meters +) then wet processed (washed) under strict quality standards, the farm is part of a program established by our importer Trabocca (and enabled by YOU, the specialty coffee drinker), which pays the producers additional price premiums when quality standards are met. At Suke Quto, wet processing includes pulping the skin off the cherry and allowing the remaining fruit to ferment for 36–72 hours (depending on weather conditions). The softened, sweet-smelling fruit is then washed off the parchment, then sun-dried on raised screens for 9–13 days

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