Ethiopia
Banko Gotiti
Worka
Gedeb district
Gedeo Zone
Yirgacheffe
1600-2300masl
Heirloom Varieties 
Natural

Fresh blueberry, dried mango, and nougat.

A workers Worka: Banko Gotiti is a small village in Ethiopia's Gedeo Zone, right near the legendary Yirgacheffe. The Banko Gotiti Co-op was set up in 2012 after branching off from the larger 'Worka cooperative'. It’s made up of about 300 members who grow traditional Ethiopian heirloom varieties in organic intercropped coffee gardens.

Iconic Yirg: Iconic but ever-changing: The Yirgacheffe region is renowned for iconic flavours, but all is not quite as it seems, as no one rule fits all. Thick, plentiful vegetation, a warm tropical climate and moderate wet and dry seasons connect the small producers of Yirgacheffe, yet the greater region comprises a multitude of special and unique microregions, each unique unto itself. As traceability and direct sourcing have increased, we see more unique and complex coffee profiles standing out among the crowd. Small producers are cultivating and controlling micro-lots, with less being lost in the sea of larger washing stations and more making its way to us as undiluted single microregion lots or small-scale select blended lots.    

"The birthplace of coffee": The preceding phrase gets used a lot, and although it sounds pretty self-explanatory, there is more to it than just a championship-style belt or tagline. While Ethiopia indeed exports a lot of coffee, which it has in common with many coffee nations worldwide, it hasn't taken trees from elsewhere nor cultivated them as 'cash crops' in the same ways as many other parts of the world. We can see the implications of this with some pretty striking contrasts.

Usually, when we think of coffee farms, we generally think of vast, organised coffee plantations stretching as far as the eye can see. But going back to the birthplace of coffee, we see coffee's humble origins and its importance in domestic life.

Most Ethiopian farmers are smallholder sustenance farmers, often owning less than one hectare of land. It would be more accurate to describe these farms as 'coffee gardens' with plants thriving in intercropped wild and biodiverse forest gardens. Because of their place historically and culturally, coffee gardens are an important part of life in Ethiopia. Coffee gardens offer financial opportunity, reliable income, nourishment through intercropping, and the added benefit of all of this contributing to a self-sustaining biodiversity.

Varietal: Heirloom is an umbrella term used to identify the abundance of wild indigenous coffees that grow in Ethiopia. Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, has seen a plethora of wonderful breeding, cross-breeding, and endlessly mutating coffee varietals that number in the thousands. As is often the case, once a desirable varietal is discovered (usually with particular flavour attributes in mind), it will be separated and cultivated on a small farm where it may later be identified as a new varietal. This is one of the things that makes sampling and selecting heirloom varietals so enticing--a surprise almost always awaits.

The Gotiti natural: Following selective picking, freshly picked cherry is delivered to the Banko Gotiti Co-op the same day they’re harvested. Here, they're further sorted by ripeness and quality, then rinsed and cleaned. After that, they’re spread out on raised drying beds and turned regularly to make sure they dry evenly.

Drying time depends on the weather, but usually takes somewhere between 8 to 25 days.