Even after 18 years of P&S, I still remember my first experience with an exceptional Ethiopian Natural. It was revolutionary to me that coffee could taste just like blueberries! Over the years, I’ve heard many similar stories from other coffee people. These are the coffees that got us hooked and plunged us down the rabbit hole seeking more.
That said, they are very polarizing. No other style of coffee simultaneously generates more compliments and complaints. For this reason, we’re isolating our naturals like these ones to the Mystic Melon & Candy Cloud Espresso. So if you love this coffee, stick with those. If you don’t skip them!
Since this coffee is a blend of two different coffees from Ture and Bekele. Each story will be told in-turn.
Ture Waji owns his own exporting company called Sookoo Coffee, and he specializes in “ultra clean” naturals. Producing naturals in this style is very challenging, because although you want them clean, you don't want them plain, so there is a delicate balancing act. After you select only ripe (and not overripe) cherry, it’s all about managing the depth of your drying beds. In Ture’s own words: you want to start with 2cm and then increase to 4cm to slow things down, and make sure you get some positive fermentation. You know it’s time to shift from 2cm to 4cm when the cherries are dry enough that they start to make noise when you move them. This is pure expert experience in action!
At Ture’s Raro Nensebo site (named after the Kebele, aka Neighbourhood it’s in), he buys cherry from 40 different farmers, and each farm is around 5-10 hectares in size. Ture opened the site in 2019, and his first order of business was to build a road up to it! Without a decent road, a site is pretty much useless, so this is often the largest cost / time constraint when building a new processing station. Ture finished the road in a month (very fast) and managed to export coffee from the site right away.
Ture has truly outdone himself with this lot, further solidifying his reputation for exceptionally clean naturals!
Bekele Yutute also exports his own coffee and owns a site called Kokose in the Bensa region. His brother-in-law, Samuel Zerihun manages the site. They call it Kokose, after the name of the local Kebele (amharic for neighborhood). They supply some coffee from their own farm (also called Kokose) and buy from outgrowers around them (i.e. neighbors). In total they only produce a tiny amount of coffee. This anaerobic natural lot was very small at only 5 bags, and we were lucky enough to obtain all of it!
It’s no accident that coffees from the small region of Bensa took the top two spots in the Cup of Excellence last year (2024). Bensa is blessed with the astounding altitude of 2300m. Seriously, this is some of the highest coffee grown in the world. All things equal, higher grown coffee is often better coffee.
