Festive Single Origin

Ethiopia: Telila Yukro, Washed

Bursting with sweet lemon, passionfruit and dried apricot, this vibrant coffee is packed with juicy yellow fruit character. A subtle note of malted milk biscuit on the finish brings balance to a cup that's bright, expressive and full of festive cheer.

Every Christmas in Sweden and across the Nordics, roasters release a julkaffe: a Christmas coffee chosen to mark the season. Our Festive Single Origin borrows that idea, and each year we pick one coffee to sit alongside our Festive Blend. The Blend is all about cosy comfort. The Single Origin stands on its own, a bright counterpoint to everything else on the Christmas table. This year’s coffee represents an unprecedented level of nuance and traceability for a coffee from Ethiopia, something we’re very excited to be able to share.

Our Festive Single Origin 

Last year’s Festive Single Origin came from Mike Mamo’s Telila washing station in Jimma, Ethiopia, grown by smallholders in Genji Challa. It went down so well that we’ve gone back to Telila for 2026, and to an old favourite. 

We’ve come back to the Yukro kebele. The first time we cupped our way through a table of Telila coffees, back in 2020, the lot from this little village in the hills of Jimma stood out. We bought it that year and for several harvests after, before giving Genji Challa its turn last Christmas. We’re very glad to have it back. 

Our limited-edition Festive Single Origin is a sparkling counterpoint to traditional Christmas flavours and comes beautifully packaged in a giftable box*, making it the perfect treat or present for every coffee lover in your life. Go on, 'tis the season! 

*Please note that 500g and 1kg coffee options do not come in a giftable festive box.

Telila Washing Station

The Telila washing station does things differently. Nearly all Ethiopian washing stations blend everything that comes through the gate and sell it under the station’s name. Telila keeps cherry separate by kebele (Ethiopia’s smallest administrative area, roughly a village and its surrounding farms), and often by delivery day too. So, when we say this coffee comes from Yukro, we mean every cherry in it was grown by smallholders there and processed as its own lot. Mike knows which specific smallholder farmers contributed to this coffee, that level of traceability is nearly unheard of in Ethiopia.

Telila sits near Kecho Anderacha in the Gera woreda, surrounded by forest and smallholder plots in Ethiopia’s lush south-west. Mike Mamo bought the station in 2019. Reforms in 2017 had made it possible for small, traceable lots to be exported directly rather than vanishing into the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange. Mike grew up around the trade (he now runs Addis Exporter, the milling and exporting business his father founded), and it shows in how fussy Telila is. Ripe cherry is floated to weed out anything underripe. It’s then pulped and fermented for around 24 hours in tile-lined tanks. After washing, the parchment dries slowly on raised beds for 18 to 20 days, turned constantly. Finally, it’s sealed into Ecotact hermetic bags for storage, a step that’s still rare in Ethiopia. The bags keep moisture and air out between drying and shipping.

Osito, the importer Mike is a partner in, puts 10 US cents from every pound of Telila coffee it sells towards projects at Kacho Tulla Primary School in Kecho Anderacha. The fund is run jointly by Addis Exporter, Telila and the school’s leadership.

This year’s harvest presents more of what we have come to expect from this excellent washing station. Mike and the team at Telila are consistently raising quality standards in Jimma, now producing washed, honey, natural, and anaerobic lots all to a high precision. Their exceptional attention to detail during the drying process results in a cup profile that’s clean and clear, a shining example of what’s best about Jimma coffees.

What are JARC 74110 and 74112?

The trees are mostly JARC 74110 and 74112. Catchy names, we know. Both began as single mother trees in the Metu-Bishari forest of neighbouring Illubabor, picked out by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center in 1974 after coffee berry disease started tearing through Ethiopia’s crop. They were released to farmers in 1979 for their resistance and reliable yields. They’re now among the most common coffees across the south-west, and at Ethiopia’s 2021 Cup of Excellence, 74110 placed second and 74112 fourth. There’s something rather neat about drinking them from Gera, too. JARC is headquartered in Jimma and runs a research sub-centre in Gera itself, so these are local trees in more ways than one. If you fancy going deeper, our guide to Ethiopian landraces untangles the whole heirloom, landrace and JARC puzzle. 

Coffee Information

• Country: Ethiopia
• Region: Oromia
• Zone: Jimma
• Woreda: Gera
• Kebele: Yukro
• Washing station: Telila
• Washing station owner: Mike Mamo
• Varietals: JARC 74110 and JARC 74112
• Processing: Washed
• Producer: Smallholders of Yukro kebele
• Elevation: 2,000 m.a.s.l.

Cupping Scores

Tasting notes: lemon, passionfruit, dried apricot.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean cup: 7/8
• Sweetness: 7/8
• Acidity: 7/8
• Mouthfeel: 6/8
• Flavour: 7/8
• Aftertaste: 6/8
• Balance: 6/8
• Overall: 7/8
• Correction: +36
• Total: 89/100

If you’d like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you’d like to try cupping yourself, we’ve got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping.

Espresso Brewing Recommendation

• Dose: 17.5g
• Time: 28-30 seconds
• Yield: 36g

Roast Information

Medium-light: keep this one a steady pace and look for the end of first crack or just into the gap, keeping that fruit acidity and sweetness at full volume.