Ethiopia Yirgacheffe (Washed Processed)

Notes of lemon, peach, bergamot, jasmine, hard-candy sweet.

Gotiti is a municipality located near the center of the coveted Gedeo Zone—the narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors whose coffee is known the world over as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous district, Yirga Chefe. The Gedeo Zone is named for the Gedeo people who are indigenous to this area. As a coffee terroir, Gedeo, or “Yirgacheffe”, has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee. It’s known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, and seductively punchy and sweet when sundried, and hardly requires an introduction.  

Gotiti was first formed in 2013, the cooperative has 12 year-round management employees and a harvest staff of more than 200 to help with all the daily tasks involved with cherry intake, processing and drying, inventory, finances, record keeping, and security.

Washed coffee at Gotiti begins with rigorous cherry sorting upon delivery from the growers. The best accepted cherry is taken straight to depulping, after which it ferments in open tanks submerged in fresh groundwater, which is replenished throughout the fermentation  process. One the mucilage is fully broken down, the parchment coffee is washed clean in long cement channels and then moved to the station’s raised screen beds to dry. Drying typically takes 2 weeks, during which time the dehydrating coffee is raked and rotated nearly constantly, as well as continuously hand-sorted to further eliminate inconsistencies or defects.

Gotiti 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.) 

Place order by 11AM by Thursday morning for same-week shipping and local pickup. Pickup and whole beans are available during our window service every day from 7AM-3PM.