New coffee! Tadese Teko Ethiopia

It’s really fun when all of our cuppers identify the same predominant tasting note for a coffee. If we had to pick only one word to describe this sweet and citrusy Ethiopia lot it would be peachy. Introducing our Tadese Teko Ethiopia. This coffee is pleasantly high-toned with tasting notes of (you guessed it) peach, hibiscus, orange blossom honey, lemon, and pear. Bottom line: This coffee is a highly enjoyable classic washed Ethiopia lot-both floral and bright-that is also a game changer in promoting farm traceable coffee in Ethiopia.

Part of Cafe Imports Single Farmer Project, this coffee was grown by coffee producer Tadese Teko on his 8 hectare farm in the Shale Village near Worka town in Yirgacheffe. Tadese has nine children who all attend school (it’s rare in this region for a family of this size to have all children attend school) thanks to his additional income from coffee sales and quality bonuses. He utilizes traditional Ethiopian growing practices which is shade-grown and devoid of using any fertilizer, pesticides, or fungicides. He is honored to have his coffee isolated out for its exceptional quality.

The Single Farmer Project was created by our friends at Cafe Imports in an effort to support Ethiopian producers with a marketplace for farm-traceable coffees. In 2012, during a turbulent time in Ethiopia’s coffee exporting history, Cafe Import’s Jason Long worked with an established cooperative to export some of the first ever truly traceable lots from Ethiopia. This was the first time a roaster could highlight an individual producer of their Ethiopia coffee lot (whereas before coffees were all sold at a government-run auction and smallholder farmer lots were combined to produce larger lots). The Single Farmer Project was the start of an incredible journey that truly began the movement for traceability in Ethiopia. This project is made possible in conjunction with important export partners supporting and bringing to market individual farmer lots. Samples are sent out to potential buyers, price is negotiated on the farmers’ behalf, and contracts are only accepted when the producer agrees on a sales price and their name is on the contract for each coffee they sell. “Our goals with this project would be to help garner and develop long-term relationships between the producers we are already working with and coffee roasting companies that share in the values of transparency, traceability, and relationship that this program represents,” says Claudia, green-coffee buyer for Cafe Imports.