New Coffee! Kayon Mountain Ethopia
Introducing a brand new Guji coffee! We love our new Kayon Mountain Ethiopia. It is resplendent in aroma and tasting notes of watermelon, green tea, gingersnaps, berries and sweet florals. It’s silky, crisp, and everything we love in a washed coffee from this special region in Ethiopia that is known for it’s conservationist spirit and unique, candy-like coffees. Enjoy!
About. This coffee hails from the Guji region in Ethiopia which is heavy with primary forest thanks to the Guji tribe, who have for generations organized and legislated to reduce mining and logging outfits in their area in order to conserve the land’s sacred canopy. Coffee farms in this zone begin at 2000 meters and climb from there in what is a very pure, yet strikingly remote, landscape. Near the town of Taro in the Odo Shakiso district is Kayon Mountain, a 1000 acre coffee farm founded by Guji native Ismael Hassen. Kayon Mountain is a standout among the broader landscape of Ethiopian coffee for a number of reasons. To begin with, estates this large are rare in a country defined by its smallholder systems: (there are over four million coffee farmers in Ethiopia and the average cultivation is a few hundred trees each). Next, Kayon Mountain exports its own coffee—a rare feat for farms of any size in Ethiopia—and as a result can bypass the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange auction entirely. Third, the estate was founded in 2012, when the Guji Zone government began carefully approving land grants to groups with ambitious organic farming plans that included the preservation of primary forest among their areas. So not only is the estate extremely young by Ethiopian standards, but there is also an environmental mandate built into their grant. In many ways, Guji represents the next generation of Ethiopian coffee where the market is evolving to allow for direct exports and larger, modernized estates are bringing quality and social justice to the forefront. This Guji coffee is a prime example of some of the best coffees from this emerging region.
