Ethiopian Landraces
Ethiopia · thousands of years · nobody selected them
also sold as “heirloom”, which means almost nothing
“A Malibu canyon after rain — unmapped, and different every hundred yards.”
Why this place
A Malibu canyon the morning after rain is a different place every hundred yards. Chaparral gives way to sycamore gives way to a seasonal creek nobody has named, steam lifting off slopes that were on fire two summers ago. Nothing about it was planned and none of it is catalogued.
That is Ethiopia. Not a variety — thousands of indigenous types, most unnamed, growing semi-wild and interbred across a country where coffee has simply always been. The word on your bag, heirloom, is a merchant’s shrug.
Which is why the cup is unpredictable in a way nothing else is. Bergamot, blueberry, peach, jasmine, black tea — sometimes several of them in a single lot, because it genuinely is several plants.
- In the cup
- Anything at all — bergamot, blueberry, peach, jasmine. The most varied coffee on earth
- Lineage
- Not a variety. Thousands of indigenous types, most uncatalogued and unnamed
- Grown
- Yirgacheffe, Guji, Sidama, Limu, Harrar
- Altitude
- 1,500–2,200 m
- Brew it as
- Filter, always. Light roast. Do not put milk in it
Our opinion
Filter, light, and no milk. Putting milk in a good Yirgacheffe is a waste of both. The whole value is aromatic and delicate and dairy flattens it completely.
Ignore “heirloom” on the bag; it tells you nothing. What tells you something is the washing station — in Ethiopia the station does the sorting and the processing, and its name predicts the cup far better than any varietal claim.
Also: buy it fresh and drink it fast. These are the lots that fall off most sharply with age, and a six-month-old Ethiopian is a sad, papery thing.
Sources
Out past the break
The Ethiopian Set
More from The Ethiopian Set