Ethiopia Basha Bekele Experimental

COFFEE NAME: Ethiopia Basha Bekele ROAST: Light TASTING NOTES:  Lemon candy, Rose water, Pomegranate REGION: Bensa, Bombe FARMER: Basha Bekele VARIETY: 74158 ELEVATION: 2215 MASL Coffee Roots This coffee comes from an experiment orchestrated by crop to cup and Basha Bekele. Basha’s father—also a community man who with Basha built a church for the community at their site in Bombe—was once a manager for a co-op in Bombe that supplied coffee to the Sidama Union. Before the government made it possible for smallholders to obtain export licenses, both he and his father sold their cherry to the cooperative. Basha now has his own export license and grows coffee (primarily 74158, known locally as “Walega”) in semi-forested plots on 12 hectares in addition to operating collection sites in Bombe, Shantawane, and Kokose—collecting cherry from producers growing coffee as high as 2300 masl. While cherry prices were high this year, Basha maintained a practice we didn’t see everywhere: delivering a