Arsosala · Washed Heirloom · Ethiopia

Founded in 2015, Arsosala is a washing station currently serving around 1,200 smallholder producers from the Guji region. Here, the coffee cherries are picked ripe and are depulped the same day they're harvested. They ferment overnight before being washed clean and dried on raised beds. It typically takes the coffee from one to two weeks to dry under the sun, but it might take up to twenty days when there are cloudy skies.

Guji is a beautifully forested area in southern Ethiopia. Before the early 2000's, this region was considered part of Sidama, but has since become its own region.

Coffees in Ethiopia are typically grown on very small plots of land by farmers who also grow other crops. The high altitude and rich red soil of the highlands, sets this coffee's profile apart from neighbouring regions, with flavours of fruits, light florals, and deep chocolate.

The majority of smallholders will deliver their coffee in cherry to a nearby washing station or central processing unit, where their coffee will be sorted, weighed, and paid for. The washing stations serve as many as several hundred to sometimes a thousand or more producers, who deliver cherry throughout the harvest season. The blending of these cherries into day lots makes it virtually impossible under normal circumstances to know precisely whose coffee winds up in which bags on what day, making traceability to the producer difficult.

We do, however, make every available effort to source coffee from the same washing stations every year, through our export partners and their connections with mills and washing stations.

Typically farmers in this region don't have access to fertilisers or pesticides, therefore these aren't utilised in the production of coffee.