Ethiopia is widely regarded as the birthplace of coffee, and Yirgacheffe – in the bottom half of the country, in the Gedeo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) – is arguably its most famous growing region. As James Hoffmans explains in The World Atlas of Coffee: “So many of the great washed coffees from Yirgacheffe are explosively aromatic, full of citrus and floral notes and have a light and elegant body, so this is undeniably one of the greatest and most interesting regions for growing coffee.”
Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX): After 2008, most of Ethiopia’s coffees (those not privately owned or from farms larger than 30 hectares) legally had to go through the ECX, at which point they lost their traceability. But in recent years, the government has worked to change this, and traceability has largely been restored. Today, a buyer can see the exact grade and truck and washing station a coffee came from, down to the woreda (district). There’s also better physical and sensory data, such as cup scores (provided by Q Graders), moisture content and the water activity of the coffee.
Mamo Kacha: “Yirgacheffe G2” is a rather broad label, and can encompass a range of flavors and cup profiles. For this reason, we chose to purchase our Yirgacheffe G2 from Mamo Kacha, an exporter that selects higher-grade washed lots from the ECX for us and curates a very intentional regional blend that’s not only the classic Yirgacheffe cup profile we love but also the highest-end version of what the Yirgacheffe G2 label signifies.