Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Natural Chelchele

Some coffees make you stop mid-sip and just smile. This is one of them.
Grown at elevations that push the upper limits of what's even possible for Ethiopian coffee, this natural process lot comes from Banko Chelchele — a community perched in the southeastern corner of the legendary Gedeb district. If you know Yirgacheffe, you know the name carries weight. But Gedeb is its own world entirely: wilder, higher, closer to the Guji Zone, and consistently responsible for some of the most electrifying cups we've ever encountered anywhere on the continent.

Meet Azeb

Behind every extraordinary coffee is a person who cares deeply. Azeb Tadesse runs an independent, two-hectare processing site in Chelchele — a small but mighty operation that during harvest season hums with the work of up to 200 people. Cherry is hand-inspected throughout the day for ripeness and uniformity, then laid out in a single layer on raised drying beds to soak up the sun slowly and deliberately over three to six weeks. That unhurried drying is what gives a great natural its soul — layered, fruit-forward complexity that no machine can manufacture.

Once fully dried to a precise 11.5% moisture content, the coffee travels to Addis Ababa where it's dry-milled by Tadesse Desta Import & Export, using modern color sorting alongside multiple rounds of careful hand-sorting. The result is a lot as clean and intentional as the hands that shaped it.

This is a coffee with a place, a person, and a purpose behind every bag. We hope it finds you on a morning worth savoring.

Origin

  Grower: Smallholder farmers organized around the Banko Chelchele processing station

  Farm: Smallholder farmers

  Region: Banko Chelchele, Gedeb District, Gedeo Zone, Ethiopia

  Cultivar: Local arabica landraces and heirloom cultivars

  Altitude: 1950 to 2200 meters

  Processing Method: Natural and dried on raised beds

Profile

  Roast Level: Medium Light Roast

  Cup profile: blueberry, honey, floral

The Cup: Natural-process Gedeb coffees tend to be perfumed and vivid — think ripe stone fruit, floral bursts, and a sweetness that lingers long after the cup is empty. This community sits closer to Guji than to the rest of Yirgacheffe, and the profile shows it: more explosive, more aromatic, unmistakably its own thing.