Ethiopia

Gedeo zone is a narrow section of Ethiopia’s southern highland plateau dense with savvy farmers, a famous terroir, and high competition for cherry. Gedeo as a whole is frequently referred to as “Yirgacheffe”, after the zone’s most famous central district. Gedeb, however, is a terroir, history, and community all its own that merits unique designation in our eyes. Coffees from this district, much closer to Guji zone than the rest of Gedeo, are often the most explosive cup profiles we see from anywhere in Ethiopia. Naturals tend to have perfume-like volatiles, and fully washed lots are often sparklingly clean and fruit candy-like in structure.

The Gedeb district is a remote but impressively industrious area for coffee production. Half of its territory is planted with coffee. The city of Gedeb itself is a is a bustling outpost that links commerce between the Guji and Gedeo Zones, with an expansive network of processing stations who buy cherry from across zone borders. The communities surrounding Gedeb reach some of the highest growing elevations for coffee in the world and are a truly enchanting part of the landscape. 

Halo Hartume Cooperative and Processing 

Halo Hartume was established in 2016, very recent compared to many Ethiopian cooperatives in Gedeo zone. The cooperative began with just 88 member farmers; today there are over 300 farmers spanning 512 hectares of coffee production—under 2 hectares apiece on average. These are quintessential Gedeo family farms: small and forested, whose production is often divided between spacious, lofty coffee trees, other fruits or legumes, and enset, a fruitless cousin of the banana plant whose pulp is packed into cakes, fermented underground, and then toasted as a staple starch. This common pair of crops satisfies unique and separate needs: coffee for economic livelihood; and enset for nutrition. 

Naturals at Halo Hartume are very straightforward. Freshly picked cherry is sorted by hand upon delivery for density and imperfections, and then taken directly to raised screen beds to dry in full sun. During the drying stage, which takes an average of 21 days, the cherry is regularly rotated and raked to ensure even air and sun exposure, and to allow for further cherry inspection and removal. Once fully dried, the cherry is de-husked in a local milling warehouse and then stored until ready for shipment to Addis Ababa, where the final milling and packing for export takes place.