Ethiopia Gesha Village 1931 Natural

Now available as a standalone coffee here.

The farm. Gesha Village is paradise on a coffee farm. It was built on a high plateau in an ancient forest considered to be the original home of the Arabica coffee species. It is both old and new at once: its venerable heirloom cultivars grow under a towering canopy of native trees managed with 21st-century precision to produce exhilarating coffee while preserving the farm’s natural resources.

The variety. Simply hearing the word “Gesha” triggers a Pavlovian response among coffee lovers. It is, hands-down, the most celebrated cultivar of the modern era. Although it became famous in Panama in the mid 2000s, the variety is decidedly older and unmistakably Ethiopian. The 1931 Gesha, named for the year it was catalogued by British botanists during a scouting expedition in the Gori Gesha forest in the far west of Ethiopia, has been repatriated at Gesha Village, where it is thriving in its native habitat.

The process. In Ethiopia, the “natural” process of drying coffee seeds inside the cherry fruit has always been the standard. It can produce extraordinary flavors. But it is notoriously risky, and has been widely abandoned during the modern specialty era in favor of the more reliable “washed” process that separates the seed from the cherry skin and rinses away any vestiges of the fruit. Gesha Village has patiently refined its processing over the past six years and now routinely produces naturals that combine the intense aromatics and amped-up flavors we expect from naturals with the crystal clarity and translucence we seek in washed coffees.

— Geoff Watts
Vice President of Coffee
Green Coffee Buyer for Ethiopia