Yirgacheffe Amederaro Lot 1626, Ethiopia, Nitrogen Natural Jasper

Ethiopia is widely recognised as the birthplace of Coffea arabica, and the forests of its southwest and south still hold the greatest genetic diversity of the species anywhere in the world. Of all Ethiopian coffee regions, Yirgacheffe is perhaps the best known, named after the town at the heart of the Gedeo Zone in the country's south. Here coffee has long been grown by smallholders as 'garden coffee', planted in dense agroforestry plots alongside enset (false banana) and native shade trees, with most households farming well under two hectares. The terrain rises steeply from around 1,200 metres in the east of the Gedeo Zone to over 3,000 metres in the west, and much of the coffee around Yirgacheffe town and Konga grows between 1,800 and 2,200 metres. Yirgacheffe built its international reputation on delicate washed coffees with jasmine and citrus character, and the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, formed in 2002, helped bring these coffees to specialty buyers. Following reforms to the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange in 2017, private exporters such as Primrose gained the ability to sell traceable, station-level lots directly, which has encouraged a new generation of experimental processing in the region.

More than 2,000 smallholder farmers deliver cherry to Amederaro each week during harvest, bringing coffee from garden plots around Konga in Yirgacheffe. The station sits close to 2,000 metres and is managed by Beyene Eshete as part of Primrose Coffee's network of Ethiopian washing stations.