ETIOPIA MARGARISSA – natural

Imagine a morning in southern Ethiopia. You're sitting with a cup of coffee when someone asks, “Where are you?”

You check your mug, look around the kitchen, and for a moment wonder if you somehow ended up in Ethiopia without a ticket. Because Margarissa tastes like a postcard sent straight from Gedeo: mandarin, florals, and milk chocolate.

High in the mountains, at an elevation of 1,900–2,100 m, the coffee ripens slowly among green hills, reddish-brown soil, and plants that have shaped this remarkable landscape for generations. Coffee bushes grow alongside Enset*, beans, and avocado trees—not on an isolated plantation, but in a living garden where every plant has its place.

This coffee comes from this very place—a natural coffee from the Gedeb region that shows how much flavor can be hidden in a single bean. Ripe coffee cherries are dried whole in the sun, allowing the beans to retain more of their natural sweetness and fruity character.

Behind Margarissa's quality is not only its exceptional terroir, but also a developing processing infrastructure. In Ethiopia, access to precise processing stations and quality control is still a challenge, which makes projects like Tadesse Desta Business Group so important—they help producers make better use of the potential of coffees that have been growing in this region for generations.

*Enset (Ensete ventricosum), known as the “false banana,” is a plant native to Ethiopia. Its leaves and underground parts are used as a food source, and in coffee cultivation it helps protect the soil and retain moisture.