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.
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.
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 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. To accomplish this process, coffee is de-pulped, but as much of the sticky mucilage layer as possible is left on the seeds. The coffee is then taken to plastic tanks, where it is sealed without oxygen, along with fresh juice from crushed coffee cherries at a ratio of 1 litre of juice to 8 kg of pulped coffee. This juice is also known as mossto, hence the name of the process.
The fermentation is rather long, at 80 hours, with the tanks turned often to distribute the juice and coffee and make sure of an even fermentation. The coffee is then dried as a honey with mucilage still attached, using a similar method to many of Gesha Village’s coffees. The coffee is laid on African raised beds, initially in thin layers for the first three days, before moving to shade drying. This quick initial drying aims to minimise fermentation on the beds, before completing the process more gradually minimises damage to the coffee’s cell structure, which is vital to keeping it tasting fresher and brighter for longer.
We also purchased a natural lot from Gesha Village's Oma plot, with clear jasmine aromatics are followed by stone fruit in the cup, with a deep sugary sweetness tied up by a black tea finish. Read more below.
