Ayla Bombe Natural

The Testi Ayla Washing Station serves around 375 smallerholder farmers in the village of Bombe near the Bombe Mountain in Sidama. Ayla is one of 26 washing stations owned and managed by Testi Coffee. While Testi Coffee’s first focus is to produce exemplary coffee, they are also community focused. Testi Project Direct is a community development initiative they created that focuses on assisting farmers and improving their quality of life. They provide financial support to farmers for upgrades, composting, picking, as well as contribute to social projects such as area schools and water projects. In addition, they pay premiums to improve the quality of living of each member farmer. They built a primary school in Denbi Uddo, Guji in 2014 and they provide annual school supplies for all the students each year. Farmers contributing to Ayla own an average of 2.5 hectares and typically grow other crops along side their coffee. Intercropping like this is beneficial to the coffee (creating higher quality lots) and to the environment (shade grown coffee and crop diversity is better for the birds while creating natural pest deterrent and weed control to prevent need for herbicides and pesticides.) Coffee here is grown in traditional Ethiopian fashion which is to use zero inputs such as herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals. Ripe coffee cherries are delivered to the Testi Ayla Washing Station where they are processed. This particular lot is a natural process coffee that is lovely and perfumy with tasting notes of passion fruit, lavender, maple, green apple, bergamot, and lime.

About the Natural Process. Your roasted coffee bean is originally a green coffee seed growing inside a coffee cherry that grows on coffee trees. The coffee cherry is picked once ripe during harvesting. From there, it is processed in a variety of ways at the farm level (before it ever gets to the roaster.) Most of the coffee we drink is washed processed. In this process, the coffee cherry and mucilage are removed (by a process of de-pulping, fermentation, and washing) from the coffee seed before the coffee is dried. Natural process, conversely, refers to a coffee processing tech­nique where the coffee is laid out to dry with the coffee cherry intact (rather than removing the cherry skin and mucilage before drying). This creates a natural fermentation environment for the coffee and can produce very intense fruit and floral notes. If you like intense fruit and floral aromas and tasting notes, a natural process is a great coffee for you to try.