NOMAD – Shakiso Hadeso 250g | Ethiopia

Hadeso sits in the Dambi Uddo kebele of Shakisso, in the Guji Zone of Ethiopia's Oromia region, a few hundred kilometres south of Addis Ababa. The station is owned and operated by Testi Specialty Coffee, and it works as a collection point rather than an estate. Around 500 smallholder farmers from the surrounding hills deliver ripe cherry there across the harvest, each of them working a small plot of land.

Because the coffee is assembled from hundreds of those plots, there is no single variety behind it. Guji's smallholdings carry a broad spread of local landraces — Kurume and Wolisho among them — planted alongside JARC selections that have been distributed to Ethiopian farmers over the years. NOMAD list the variety as local varieties, which is the accurate description of what actually goes into the bag. The farms sit between 1850 and 2100 metres above sea level.

The processing is natural, and most of the work is in the sorting. Cherry is hand-picked daily and hand-sorted at the station to remove anything underripe or damaged, then separated by density before drying begins. It is spread in thin layers on raised tables and turned frequently, drying for 15 to 18 days before hulling and preparation for export.

The cup opens floral. NOMAD describe freeze-dried roses on the nose, with candied blueberries and raspberry behind them, and that fruit carries onto the palate alongside white sugar sweetness, milk chocolate and fig. The body is silky, and the acidity is juicy — closer to wild berries than to citrus. It is a natural Ethiopian that reads sweet and layered rather than heavy, and it holds its sweetness right through the finish.

This is NOMAD's filter roast of the lot, bag code F.ET.NHAD.

Freshly roasted by NOMAD Coffee in Barcelona and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.