Lekempti

Clean and bright with a citrus-forward cup, this Washed Heirloom lot has flavours of yellow stonefruits and citrus accompanied by a floral note in both the aroma and finish.

This lot is grown by smallholder farmers scattered across the Wollega Zone of western Ethiopia and channelled for export through Nekemte, the regional trade hub that has given its name - Lekempti - to coffee from the wider area for over a century. Most farms here are small, semi-forest or garden plots tended without synthetic inputs, largely for reasons of tradition and cost rather than certification, meaning much of the region's output is organic in all but paperwork. Cherries from many individual farmers are aggregated at local washing stations before processing, so this lot represents the combined work of a large number of growers rather than a single estate.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of Coffea arabica, and its forests still hold by far the widest genetic diversity of any coffee-growing country, with close to a fifth of the world's coffee farms found within its borders. Western Ethiopia's Wollega region sits within the country's montane rainforest belt, a zone of high rainfall (1400-1800mm annually), deep Nitisol soils and dense indigenous forest cover. Historically overshadowed by better-known origins like Yirgacheffe and Sidamo, Wollega has more recently drawn specialty attention for the value and diversity its smallholder, forest-grown coffees offer.