Coffee roasters—not unlike Santa Claus—often have no choice but to make very harsh lists distinguishing the naughty from the nice. We do not RELISH this, nor do we see coffees as BINARY OBJECTS, but at the end of the day… or perhaps the start of the next day… we must reflect upon the virtues and vices of each and every Coffee of Yesteryear, determining which paths to retread in the future and which ones to—for better or worse—abandon. And in the throes of this wildly arduous process, do you know what we’ve realized pretty much ALWAYS makes the NICE LIST??????

COFFEES FROM ETHIOPIA.

Yup. So what do we do with this information? Welp, this year, we brought in a whole bunch of ‘em. And you know what? It’s been freakin’ awesome. So awesome in fact that when we zoomed into perhaps our SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT OFFERING SELECTION OF THE YEAR, we knew that among the Dream Team lineup of Dashers and Dancers and Comets and Cupids, all we really had to do was search through that blissful fog and find the shiniest nose of them all…

Reshad Ababulgu’s natural process rendition of the 74110 variety comes to us from ~2,000 meters above sea level on a farm in Oma Fontule, Jimma. The land has been in his family for three generations, but only recently has he been able to self-export and sell the coffee as his own. Prior to this, Reshad was delivering his coffee to the Duromina Cooperative—a name that’ll certainly ring a bell for the REAL HEADS out there who have been drinking the goodest good coffee for a while now. 

While no widespread legislative change to coffee production and export seems ever to fall any more snugly into the NAUGHTY/NICE binary than real live people do, the move to allow individual producers to self-export is an exciting prospect for buyers and roasters like us. With the ability to build sustained relationships with individual producers, we feel like the already-astounding quality found throughout Ethiopia can grow even more meaningful, and we’re absolutely here for it.

As for FRUITCAKE, this most delicate and esteemed of products in all of the TCU, we tend to know it when we sip it. As implied above, Reshad’s coffee presented itself on the cupping table with vibrant citrus and red fruits, characteristics that morphed into spicy stone fruit and hibiscusy botanicals on subsequent visits. 

All kidding aside, what we really look for in Fruitcake is something that is both fantastic and somehow intuitively festive, and that’s exactly what we found in this one. No matter what you’re celebrating, this lives up to the occasion.

HAPPY HAPPY

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