Cup Characteristics: Medium-Bold intensity with a bright citric sweetness. A fantastic Ethiopia with remarkable clarity in the cup flavors. The smell when grinding is extremely aromatic! The smells and tastes take you through a walk in the fields of jasmine and honeysuckle blooms and proclaims a predominately strong hint of bright floral-citrus notes. This is both an organic & fair-trade coffee.

The cream of the crop of coffees is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and still considered by many to be the finest Ethiopian coffee. This intense feeling coffee enhances the palate with its very distinctive floral bouquet, rich body, a pleasingly fragrant aroma, with a smooth mellowness that's unique unto itself.

Ethiopian's believe coffee originated in Kaffa, which is in the southern Oromia region. Farmers have grown coffee bushes under the shade of forest trees on rolling hills rich soils, lush vegetation for thousands of years. Coffee grew wild on the Harar plateau before the existence of man.

The bulk of the Ethiopian coffee is grown by small holder farmers and 12,000 tonnes by seven state-owned coffee estates. Certified organic Ethiopian coffee has only been available since 1999 when some producers were granted a waiver to bypass the government auction system. They can now sell direct to western importers through the cooperatives to which they belong, and cut out the services of two sets of buyers and an independent exporter to deal with the final processing. This co-op also enables some of them to gain fair trade status, and receive a significant proportion of profits.

Like other premium quality gourmet coffees, these Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans are picked by hand. Picking by hand takes numerous visits per tree each year, because coffee cherries do not all ripen at the same time (and of course we only want the "perfect" red cherries that only hand picking gives us). A single branch of a coffee tree might very well bear blossoms, green fruit, and ripe cherries - all at the same time. An experienced coffee "picker" can pick about 200 pounds of ripe coffee cherries in one day. Which only yields about 50 pounds of green beans after processing.

This Ethiopian Yirgacheffe is a washed coffee in which the coffee beans, after having the outer layers of skin and fruity pulp removed, are soaked up to 72 hours in fermentation tanks. Beans treated with this "wet" method will generally have a higher acidity, a cleaner winey or floral flavor, and more of a full body than the beans processed by the dry method.

Yirgacheffe coffees overall are a renowned wet-processed type that exude brightness in their cup. As a sub-region of Sidamo, Yirgacheffe seemed like quite a specific designation several years ago, but times are changing in the coffee world. As small buyers of micro-lots start to travel to coffee origins more, our ability to designate the source of our coffees becomes more specific. And now we have started to find, within the Yirgacheffe area, special regions with particular cup character.

This OCFCU co-op is a skilled organization charged with the responsibility of processing support, marketing, and commercializing coffee for 74 cooperatives comprising of 68,691 members and 343,455 family members. In 2004, OCFCU produced 81,596 tons of coffee (30,415 of which are organic).

Entering into its seventh year of direct export, OCFCU is the first entity to have been granted the right to bypass the Ethiopian coffee auction in order to sell directly to foreign buyers. They currently have 48 pulperies, 15 hulleries, and 63 warehouses within the farming communities. OCFCU works exclusively in Oromia Regional State, which accounts for 65% of the country's total coffee producing land.