Chelchele Site

A juicy, fruit-forward cup with ripe peach, a red wine note, and crisp blackberry acidity.

Banko Chelchele

Banko Chelchele is a village in the Gedeb woreda of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone. Coffee here grows between 1,900 and 2,300 metres in fertile, well-drained red clay, with 1,200 to 1,600 mm of rain a year. Smallholders farm the land, and for most families coffee is the main income. At harvest, from October to December, the whole community turns out to pick.

Cold Anaerobic Natural

Farmers hand-pick ripe cherry and bring it to the mill’s collection points, where it’s sorted to remove over-ripe, under-ripe, and damaged fruit. The whole cherries are then sealed in pressurized, oxygen-free tanks and fermented cold, at 15 to 18°C, for seven to ten days. Keeping it cold slows the fermentation and gives the mill close control over how the fruit develops. The cherry then goes straight onto shaded raised beds and dries slowly over 15 to 20 days. It’s turned regularly and checked with a moisture meter until it reaches 11%.

The 74 Series 

74110 and 74112 are selections made by Ethiopia’s Jimma Agricultural Research Center in the 1970s. They came from wild coffee in the Metu Bishari forest and were chosen for resistance to coffee berry disease. Today they’re among the most widely planted varieties in southern Ethiopia.