Drop Coffees - Uraga Natural, Ethiopia
About the Coffee
Flavour profile: An aroma of cacao and blueberries. This is a coffee with lots of sweetness and acidity. It has flavour notes of mango, lemon curd and blueberries with floral undertones. The coffee has beautiful long-lasting citric acidity in the aftertaste.
Colour: Light blue
Category: Curious
Producer: Israel Degfa, of the company Kerchanse
Processing: Natural processed, the grade one coffee cherries are carefully sorted and dry for over 25 days.
Process station: Uraga
The number of delivering farmers: 1200 smallholding with an average of 2-3 hectares per farm.
Harvested: January 2021
Varietal: Indigenous wild varietals and 74110
Area: Uraga Solemo, Sonkolle Kebele (village) in Guji Zone in the Oromia region
Altitude: Uraga process station is located on 2050 masl, yet most farms delivering to Uraga are located even higher.
Price transparency: The FOB-price for this coffee was US$3,4 per pound.
Roast Style: Light to medium to enhance the light, juicy mouthfeel with loads of fruity and floral notes.
Uraga is one of the louder cup profiles we have from Israel Degfa. Due to the high altitude of 2000 masl and above, the harvest and produced coffee until February, and then dried on beds for another month, most other places end the season in December. The coffee is very mature and gets a sweet experience, reminding of blueberry mousse, which makes it a very complex cup with high citric acidity notes.
Ethiopia is one of our favourite origins. Its’ taste profile and culture are both diverse and interesting. The Arabica coffee plant was first found growing wild in Ethiopia and Yemen, and then Ethiopia became the motherland of coffee. About 6,6 million bags are produced in the country every year, of which almost half is kept in the country for local consumption.
About Israel Degfa
This is the sixth year in a row that we are buying coffee from Israel Degfa, the only private producer we are working with within Ethiopia. Israel has become a good friend of ours and we want to support his work on sustainability.
Israel is one of the warmest people we know and also truly successful in the business. He was born near Sidamo, Yirgalem, and his parents were both in coffee in different ways. His mum sold coffee at the bus station and his dad was a farmer. This is where he found his love for coffee. He went to primary school in Yiralem and went to high school and college in Addis Abeba.
In 2013 Israel founded the company by Kerchanshe trading company that is named after the nearest town, Kerchanste town (fondly referred to as Kercha). Today he has 26 washing stations and a few dry-mills; the guy is 33 years old and has only had the business for 7 years, talk about impressive.
In the surrounding area of Uraga, there are many smallholding semi-forest farms, about 1200 of them are delivering freshly picked coffee cherries to Uraga. Most of them are having 2-3 hectare farms which are slightly bigger than in other regions. On the days they are not delivering coffee, many of them are working at the process station.
Sustainability
We want to support Israel Degfa's work on sustainability with the farmers aiming to get them out of poverty through coffee and he is producing some really stunning coffees that we are more than happy to buy.
Israel visited us at Drop the first year we worked together, in 2015. Since then we have been visiting each other every year. Israel is continuously improving its standards of coffee. Last year the total percentage of production that was speciality coffee by Kerchance has almost doubled, speciality coffee is close to 10% of all coffee produced. Higher quality means higher prices for the coffee for the farmers delivering coffee.
As part of our transparency and the ongoing coffee price crisis, we want to share our FOB prices for the coffee we buy. This coffee has been paid 3,4 USD per pound.