HAMBELLA

Faysel Abdosh is one of the more respected private producers working across Guji and Sidama in southern Ethiopia. He built his name on meticulous processing and has grown his operation steadily over the years, and today he runs washing stations in both regions. Among them is the Ayla station in Sidama, which he named after his niece, and a newer site he has recently built in Hambella Womena, Guji. His stations buy ripe cherry from hundreds of neighbouring smallholders and put it through carefully managed fermentation and slow drying, and the honey and washed lots that come off his sites are consistently clean, layered, and full of fruit.

Ethiopian heirloom, sometimes written as mixed heirloom, is not a single named variety at all. It is the term used for the thousands of indigenous landrace types that grow across Ethiopia, the birthplace of Arabica coffee. Many of these plants have never been formally catalogued, and have instead been selected and passed down by farming families over countless generations, each one adapted to the exact hillside and altitude where it grows. This deep genetic diversity is a big part of what makes Ethiopian coffee so distinctive, giving cups that are floral and citric with a delicate tea like quality, bright acidity, and layered fruit that can shift from one village to the next.

Honey processing sits in the middle ground between washed and natural, and takes its name from the sticky, honey like feel of the coffee as it dries. The skin is pulped off, but some or all of the sweet mucilage is deliberately left clinging to the bean through the drying stage. How much is left on, and how dark the coffee turns as it dries, gives the different styles their names, running from white through yellow and red to black honey, each one a little richer than the last. The result is a cup with round sweetness, soft gentle acidity, and a syrupy, layered body that borrows a little from both of its neighbours.