Ethiopia

Gesha Village Collection

Our fourth year working with Gesha Village, pioneers in the ultra high end Ethiopian coffee industry.

Producer
Gesha Village
Coffee expression
Narsha: Floral & Balanced
Oma: Floral & Wild
Dimma: Fruity & Wild

Regular price: $73.00
incl. vat/tax
Sale price: $73.00
incl. vat/tax
Regular price: ~~$73.00~~
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Ethiopia

Gesha Village Collection

Gesha Village lies in the Bench Maji zone of South Western Ethiopia, not far from the border with South Sudan. This area, in the high altitude humid forests where the Great Rift Valley passes into South Sudan, is thought to be the birthplace of Arabica coffee, and is still home to great genetic diversity. Here at Gesha Village however, one varietal sits in the spotlight; Geisha.

Gesha Village

Narsha

This incredible raw material, grown in its native wild forest, combined with careful processing, creates an intense yet clean and delicate flavour experience. Clear jasmine aromatics are followed by stone fruit in the cup, with a deep sugary sweetness tied up by a black tea finish.

Gesha Village

Oma

This lot of Gesha 1931 was grown on the Oma plot of Gesha Village, reaching up to 2040 masl and producing some of the most aromatic coffees on the farm. This excellent raw material is elevated ever further by an innovative honey process that Gesha Village have dubbed ‘Mossto Anaerobic’. This method involves the juice of the coffee fruit, adding extra sugar to the fermentation to create a wild expression, while maintaining the clean and floral characteristics of the varietal.

Gesha Village

Dimma

To create this lot, Illubabor Forest cherries were harvested from the Dimma plot of the farm, located at over 2000 metres above sea level, before processing using anoxic fermentation. Full cherries were placed in the same GrainPro bags that coffee is often shipped in, and placed under a plastic cover to protect from sunlight. These thick plastic bags are impermeable to water and oxygen, so when they are sealed and the cherries begin to ferment, the bags expand as carbon dioxide is produced. After 84 hours of fermentation, the cherries were dried using raised African beds in very thin layers, so almost no fermentation is allowed to occur on the beds.

Ethiopia

Gesha

Adam Overton and Rachel Samuel first travelled to Ethiopia in 2007 to make a documentary about its unique method of coffee production, and fell in love with the country. They decided during that short trip that they would eventually move to the country to start producing coffee themselves. They found a 471 hectare plot of land in Bench Maji, further west than we normally find specialty coffee in Ethiopia, in a remote area of untouched high altitude forest. The wild forest remained as coffee was planted, maintaining as much as possible of the biodiversity so crucial to the Ethiopian mode of production, while also providing ample shade for the fragile Geisha trees.

This isn’t just any Geisha however. Gesha Village is located only around 20 km from the Gori Gesha forest, where the hallowed varietal of the same name was first isolated by British researchers in 1931. When preparing Gesha Village, the team behind the project trekked into the forest and gathered seeds from the wild coffee trees growing there, selecting those that genetically resembled the original 1931 expedition Geisha.

Technical Data

Producer
Gesha Village
Region
Bench Maji
Altitude
1950-2000 masl
Varietal
Gesha 1931 & Illubabor 1974
Process
Natural & Honey
Harvest
December 2021 & January 2022

Honey Process

With the honey process a certain amount of mucilage and pulp are allowed to remain on the coffee bean during depulping. The cover will stay with the bean during fermentation and drying thereby contributing to the sugars absorbed by the bean and affecting the flavour notes of the final cup. The amount of mucilage remaining defines the type of honey process - white, yellow, red or black in ascending order of mucilage concentration. If they are processed properly, the coffees can take on quite a lot of sweetness and flavours while remaining clean.

Raised drying beds (sometimes referred to as African drying beds) are often preferable when working with honey processed coffees, because of the additional airflow they allow. The air ensures that the beans dry evenly and reduces the incidence of fungi and bacteria formation. On the other hand, some farmers are accustomed to using sun-exposed patio drying that require a regular raking of beans to avoid moulds. While total fermentation and drying time depend on such choices as well as ambient temperature and moisture levels, red honey processing easily needs two weeks from depulping until drying has completed.