Call us old fashioned, but Ethiopia just excites us that EXTRA amount. We do not play favorites when it comes to coffee-producing countries, and we are always eager to feature places that we’ve never tried… but still, there comes a time when we’re just counting the days till that first Ethiopian arrival of the season. No matter how far and wide we explore, nothing ever takes its place.

That said, you can imagine the utter impossibility of selecting only one coffee from this powerhouse-producing nation, so to put it simply—we never do. We always bring in at least two, and usually three! And this year, the first duo of releases happens to have the added appeal of both coming from the same washing station in Yirgacheffe. Kurume gets its name from the distinct local variety that makes up this lot, which then undergoes a perfectly executed dry/natural process yielding NOT a super funky natural, but still packing that extra fruit POP that the best renditions of this process evoke.

If you’ve already dipped into the peachy keen goodness of our washed Gargari Gutity, then you know that Gargari is a village in Gedeb, Yirgacheffe where this station is run by Mr. Abreham Mengiste & Mrs. Meseret Workneh of Primrose Coffee. Thousands of smallholder farmers from throughout Gedeb deliver their cherries here, though only a small portion of them have the teeny tiny Kurume variety in their farms and forests. This variety is kept separate and dried on raised beds for 19 - 25 days, ensuring slow/steady/even drying. The result is big purple perfection: blueberries, grapes, lavender. Imagine amethyst as a pop rock, then spritz it with lavender, then package it in small, spherical form, and you’ve basically got this coffee.

These coffees never last, so scoop this one up while ya can!

22 oz

Roasted in Troy, New York USA  

We find coffees that people care about. Care is such an important part of the journey from seed to cup and is also the part most immediately felt. We pay attention to the people and stories behind the coffee because when the seeds are sown with care we know that it will be illuminated on the cupping table. This is the coffee that quite literally gets us out of bed in the morning in a rush to share it with our community. When we accept stewardship of this luminous thing we enter into a relationship with the farmersand producers. Our responsibility is to contribute meaningfully to their short-term and long-term success. We do this by ensuring that adequate prices are paid to farmers for growing these beautiful coffees, supporting and encouraging healthy, sustainable agricultural and environmental practices and forging long-lasting partnerships with producers that share our commitment to quality.

When we roast coffee our goal is simple, but achieving it is complex. The plant’s genetic makeup, the earth underneath it, the careful tending and processing of the fruit – all of the things that make this coffee so special should be felt by you, the last hand to touch it. Roasting is the magic that gets the specialness of the raw coffee into your cup. Our minimal intervention ethos ironically requires an intensive methodology of precisely calibrating, measuring and refining in service of drawing out and highlighting the coffee’s best attributes. Our methods and the equipment we use are high-tech and empirical but we like to feel our way through the process in equal measure. If, when the coffee finds its way to your cup, you feel connected at least in some small way to the hand that planted the seed, we consider that the ultimate success.