We’re starting 2018 with this delicious coffee from Ethiopia – it feel right to go back to the birthplace of coffee to get the new year started.

Abiyot Boru washing station (pronounced “Ab-yet bu-ru”) is located in the Shakiso district, within the Guji zone, and around 100km south-west from the more familiar and famous Yirgacheffe. Shakiso is one of the regions which was previously grouped together as Sidamo coffee, but is now being separated out as a region in its own right.

The station’s name comes from its owner, and at Abiyot Boru they process coffee cherries from around seven hundred nearby smallholders, who delivery harvests daily. The particular lot that you’re drinking is Grade 1, meaning it’s the best quality cherries from the mill, which were hand-selected as part of the milling process.

Like much of the coffee from Ethiopia, this is marked as Ethiopian Heirloom varietal – a mix of the naturally occurring mutations and hybrids of Arabica that grow in the region. They’re mostly traceable back to the Typica varietal, but these mutations are one of the reasons Ethiopian coffee has the complex, delicate flavours that we love here at Sample.