Basha Bekele

About This Coffee

Basha Bekele operates six processing stations in the Bensa area of Sidama, including one in the municipality of Kokose where this coffee is from. Located in the fertile highlands of the Rift Valley, Sidama features elevations that soar up to 2,200 meters, creating cool temperatures where coffee fruit ripens very slowly. This translates to a later harvest than other regions and yields coffee with incredibly complex acidity and intense sweetness. In this lot we find a lively medley of tropical fruit, florals and berries with a refined sugar sweetness. After export regulations were liberalized by the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange in 2017, Basha Bekele obtained his own export license and has since developed a reputation for producing incredibly high quality natural processed coffees, solidified by his first place win in the 2024 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence. This particular lot is comprised of predominantly the 74158 cultivar, known colloquially as ‘Walega,’ as well as various other local varieties that have been identified by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC). Since its formation in 1967, JARC has cataloged 42 indigenous Ethiopian coffee varieties and created 9 hybrid varieties, documenting characteristics like yield, cup quality, and drought and disease resistance. For processing, freshly picked coffee was first floated in water to remove defects and then dried slowly and evenly on raised beds over the span of three to five weeks.