Description
Worka is a large municipality in the Gedeb district, the southernmost district of Ethiopia’s famous Gedeo zone. Nearly all of Gedeb is known for its gifted processing climate and experienced growers. Washed and natural coffees alike from this area tend to be dense and fruit-forward, ranging from sparkling clean acidic fruits to jammy or herbal concentrated sweetness. Halo Hartume is a small municipality very close to the city of Gedeb and is one of the most recently established individual cooperatives that make up the storied Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU).
Tasting Notes: Fantastic example of an Ethiopian Natural. Keep this one light to medium roasted. Too dark and the awesome crisp and clean fruit/floral notes disappear. A mellow cup on the sweeter side with nice red fruit tones popping right out. The cool natural tones balance with a tea like spice note, a sign of its roots, Yirgs are known for their more tea like dark tones. Many would call it a chocolaty undertone with a jazzy spice note but we like the tea reference and most will agree. A bit more delicate of a cup with a little lower acidity than the other Ethiopian lots. Depending on what you like this can be a real perk, fruity and sweet without risking high acidity or overly sour tones at the lighter roast points. A little easy to roast out the fruitiness, so don’t let it get too dark!
Roasting Notes: Natural processed with good prep on it, a fairly easy bean to roast. A bit higher chaff and one will notice a little two toned roasting but being tasty from light to dark, should not be a problem getting a tasty cup. Recommend starting at a nice medium roast, if you don’t like acidic and floral, error a little darker, if you love fruity floral, error a little lighter. A little longer setup really smooths out the cup, can be a little more extreme 1-2 days after roasting.
Gedeb and Its Coffee
Gedeo zone is a narrow section of Ethiopia’s southern highland plateau dense with savvy farmers, a famous terroir, and high competition for cherry. Gedeo as a whole is frequently referred to as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous central district. Gedeb, however, is a terroir, history, and community all its own that merits unique designation in our eyes. Coffees from this district, much closer to Guji zone than the rest of Gedeo, are often the most explosive cup profiles we see from anywhere in Ethiopia. Naturals tend to have perfume-like volatiles, and fully washed lots are often sparklingly clean and fruit candy-like in structure.
The Gedeb district is a remote but impressively industrious area for coffee production. Half of its territory is planted with coffee. The city of Gedeb itself is a is a bustling outpost that links commerce between the Guji and Gedeo Zones, with an expansive network of processing stations who buy cherry from across zone borders. The communities surrounding Gedeb reach some of the highest growing elevations for coffee in the world and are a truly enchanting part of the landscape.
Halo Hartume Cooperative and Processing
Halo Hartume was established in 2016, very recent compared to many Ethiopian cooperatives in Gedeo zone. The cooperative began with just 88 member farmers; today there are over 300 farmers spanning 512 hectares of coffee production—under 2 hectares apiece on average. These are quintessential Gedeo family farms: small and forested, whose production is often divided between spacious, lofty coffee trees, other fruits or legumes, and enset, a fruitless cousin of the banana plant whose pulp is packed into cakes, fermented underground, and then toasted as a staple starch. This common pair of crops satisfies unique and separate needs: coffee for economic livelihood; and enset for nutrition.
Naturals at Halo Hartume are very straightforward. Freshly picked cherry is sorted by hand upon delivery for density and imperfections, and then taken directly to raised screen beds to dry in full sun. During the drying stage, which takes an average of 21 days, the cherry is regularly rotated and raked to ensure even air and sun exposure, and to allow for further cherry inspection and removal. Once fully dried, the cherry is de-husked in a local milling warehouse and then stored until ready for shipment to Addis Ababa, where the final milling and packing for export takes place.
The Yirgacheffe Union
Worka is one of the primary cooperatives that together make up the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU). The Union, first established In 2002, has more than 45,000 individual farmer members and 28 different cooperatives across Gedeo Zone, almost all of which are Fair Trade certified. (Gedeo, while tiny compared to neighboring Sidama and Guji zones, is one of Ethiopia’s most densely populated areas after Addis Ababa.) The members of each primary cooperative elect their own executive committee which makes decisions about investments like new equipment and tree maintenance, but also creates plans for member social services, school support, public health, infrastructure, and how to structure payments to the coop members. YCFCU also appoints professional managers for each primary cooperative to oversee harvest and processing procedures, who are accountable to the members and the executive committee.
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