Éthiopie lavé – Shilicho

// You charm my father, you charm my mother – we have to admit, you wear it well // If every bean were a note, this one would be a pretty, pretty, pretty fruit salad. With apologies to Bourvil, a citrusy coffee that smells like summer, a lively coffee with bergamot aromas.

Cooperative: Shilicho
Region: Sidama
Farm altitude: 1,800 to 1,900 m
Coffee varieties: indigenous – this is a “Garden Coffee”: farmers have several coffee trees in their gardens, but it is harder to identify the exact variety of each plant.
Process: washed
Harvest: hand-picked, November to December
Cooperative founded: 2001
Number of members: more than 80,000 farmers
Website: http://www.sidamacoffee.com/Certification: organic farming

Coffee purchased directly from the producer @Roasters United

Cup profile: well balanced, with pleasant acidity. Notes of citrus and a bergamot aftertaste.

Our Ethiopian coffee comes from the Darra district, 350 km south of Addis Ababa, on the border of the Yirgacheffe region. The cooperative is a member of the SCFCU (Sidama Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union), a union of 67 cooperatives that provides its members with shared bean processing facilities and quality control tools. Shilicho nevertheless has its own pulping, washing, and drying facility, and sends its coffee to the SCFCU only for storage. The SCFCU supports its members in their business dealings with international coffee buyers, ensuring ethical and responsible commercial practices.

This coffee is prepared using the “washed” method: the coffee cherries are rinsed in large water tanks for sorting. They then ferment dry for 36 to 48 hours before being soaked again for 8 hours. Finally, they are dried for 7 to 10 days on African beds. At every stage, the beans are sorted manually or mechanically to keep only the highest-quality beans.