ETHIOPIA - Bensa Kelada

The Flavour Profile

Picture ripe blueberries, sweet tropical fruit and the fragrant zest of Earl Grey tea, all in one cup. This single origin Ethiopian coffee is a light roast, freshly roasted to keep every bright, juicy note alive: sweet blueberry, tropical fruit and a floral bergamot finish.

It grows at 2,100 to 2,200 metres in Bensa, in Ethiopia's Sidama region. At that height the coffee cherries ripen slowly in the cool mountain air, so the beans grow dense and build more natural sugars and a brighter, cleaner acidity. Because it's natural processed, the whole cherry dries around the bean for about 20 days, and the fruit's sweetness soaks in. That's where the jammy blueberry character comes from. A light roast keeps all of this intact instead of covering it with roasty flavours.

In the cup it's juicy and silky, with a light-to-medium body and a clean, lingering finish.

Drinking it black? This is where it really shines. Expect blueberry up front, tropical sweetness in the middle and a fragrant bergamot lift at the end, a bit like a fruit tea with a coffee heart. Brew it as a V60, Chemex, AeroPress or filter coffee to taste every layer.

Drinking it with milk? The fruit softens into something like a blueberry muffin, sweet and creamy, with the bergamot gently in the background. It's best in a flat white or a small cortado, where the milk doesn't drown the fruit.

This specialty coffee works beautifully for filter, pour over, AeroPress and cafetière, and adventurous espresso lovers will enjoy it as a bright, fruity shot. Like all our single origins, it's freshly roasted to order by Nick in our roastery, just outside Canterbury, so it never sits on a shelf. We're happy to grind it for your brewing method, and if you fall for it, buy a kilo and save 10%.

Explore our naturally processed coffees →

The Little Details

This coffee comes from Tariku Kare Coffee Export in Shantawene, Bensa Woreda, in Ethiopia's Sidama region. Owner Tariku Kare Banata started out as a labourer in 1994, bought his first processing station in 2012, and has exported Sidama Arabica around the world since 2020. His farm covers just 1.8 hectares and sits at 2,100–2,200 metres above sea level. This lot, Sidama Bensa Kelada G1, is natural processed and graded Grade 1, Ethiopia's top export grade.

About the Process

Every cherry in this lot is picked by hand, and only the fully ripe, deep red ones make the cut. That careful selection is the first step to a sweet, clean cup, because one underripe cherry can bring sourness to a whole batch.

The whole cherries are then spread out on raised drying beds made from wooden posts, bamboo and mesh. Air flows underneath, so the fruit dries evenly from every side. For around 20 days, the team turns the cherries every 20 to 30 minutes and covers them during the hottest part of the day and at night, protecting them from harsh sun and moisture. This slow, patient drying is what lets the fruit's sugars soak into the bean.

Once the cherries reach 10–11% moisture, the dried fruit is removed and the green beans are sorted. Each lot is tracked by its lot and bag number, so every bag can be traced back to where it came from, before the coffee travels to Addis Ababa for export.

Twenty days of turning, covering and watching, all by hand, so that when you open your bag, the first thing you smell is ripe blueberry.