Relationship
This lot comes through a partnership with Red Fox Coffee Merchants, a team we trust for Ethiopia sourcing and have leaned on across multiple seasons. For this release, Dathan and Zach helped steer samples and logistics, even keeping our position reserved while we re-cupped. We put 15+ fully washed Ethiopians from several importers and regions on the table; Kolla Bolcha landed in our top three on the first pass and became the clear pick in round two.
Country
Ethiopia is the birthplace of Arabica and a place where coffee is woven into daily life. From home roasting to the bunna ceremony brewed in a clay jebena, coffee is not just a crop—it’s a social ritual and a marker of hospitality, celebration, and conversation. Generations of farmers have tended coffee in mixed “garden” systems around their homes, intercropping with food and shade trees and passing seeds and knowledge within the community.
Economically, coffee is Ethiopia’s most important agricultural export and a primary source of rural livelihoods. Most production comes from smallholder families who pick ripe cherry and deliver it to local washing stations or dry it at home for natural processing. The station-centered system emphasizes careful cherry selection, clean fermentation, and slow drying—steps that drive quality and preserve the character of Ethiopia’s broad genetic base of landraces. High domestic consumption keeps a meaningful share of the harvest in-country, while exported lots like this one showcase Ethiopia’s enduring connection to coffee on the world stage.
Region – Agaro
Agaro lies in Ethiopia’s southwestern highlands in Jimma Zone (Oromia), a forested, high-elevation coffee belt west of Addis Ababa. Beyond coffee, the area is known for mixed smallholder agriculture and evergreen montane ecosystems that intermix with coffee gardens. For coffee specifically, Agaro has long histories of semi-forest and garden production; much of the crop is tended by smallholders and moved through modernized washing-station networks that emphasize selective picking and centralized wet milling.
Climatically, Agaro sits in the cool, high-rainfall highlands where coffee matures slowly; Kimbibit community soil is a highly fertile sandy loam with good water retention and drainage. It’s self-sufficient with proper planting practices and doesn’t require fertilizer to produce spectacular quality.
Processing Station
Kolla Bolcha aggregates cherries from hundreds of nearby smallholders in the Agaro highlands. Day lots are received and hand-sorted, floated for density, and mechanically depulped before a controlled soak to complete mucilage removal. Parchment is then washed in channels, graded by density, and moved to raised beds for slow, attentive drying—frequent turning, sun exposure managed by time of day and weather, and careful resting once stable moisture is reached. The station’s emphasis on clean reception and a steady, even dry is a big part of why this cup lands so precisely.
Variety
In Agaro (and most of Ethiopia), farmers plant a diverse variety of locally adapted landraces. Be it seedlings sourced from neighborhood nurseries, shared among families, or selected from long-standing garden trees. Over decades, these plantings mingle, so an individual farm—and certainly a station blend—rarely contains a single, traceable cultivar.
Ethiopia also has widely distributed JARC “74-series” selections (like 74110, 74112, 74158), but these improved lines have been often interplanted with older local types. In 2023 World Coffee Research has released their arabica coffee genetic fingerprint database in collaboration with Sweden based AgriTek to ease the process of genetic identification of individual plants.
Source: World Coffee Research, Coffee Story: Ethiopia
Process
Ripe cherries are selectively hand-sorted, coffees are washed and mechanically depulped, then soaked overnight. After fermentation, coffee is dried for 6 to 8 hours a day over 6 to 8 days on raised beds, with frequent turning for even drying
(Source: Red Fox Coffee Merchants.)
