Ethiopia Yirgacheffe May 2012

Upon arriving today, we just had to brew another pot of the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee that arrived yesterday. It is smooth and rich with a hint of citrus and a fruity after-taste. It is always fun to taste the new crop to see what the coffee will show each year. A few times we are disappointed but mostly we find that the best estates and regions are pretty consistent, but like all agricultural products there is annual variation.

Coffee originated in the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, which was once its own Kingdom from 1390 up until the late 19th Century. This area in southwest Ethiopia is mountainous and fertile. There are still wild coffee trees to be found there in the forests. Yirgacheffe, or Irgachefe, is located just to the southeast of the historic Jaffa region.

Ethiopia has a coffee ceremony that dates back hundreds of years. It is a ritualized form of preparing and serving coffee, which starts with the roasting of the beans and continues typically through three servings of coffee, each serving having a name - awel in Tigrinya, the second kale'i and the third bereka ('to be blessed').