TANAT – Alo Chilaka [Natural] 200g | Ethiopia

High in Ethiopia's Sidama zone, in the Bensa woreda that sits right at the region's eastern edge near the Harenna Forest, altitude does a lot of the work before a coffee cherry is ever picked. Bensa's growing sites regularly clear 2,000 metres, and this lot from producer Tamiru Tadesse pushes further still, grown between 2,320 and 2,400 metres above sea level — high even by Sidama's own elevated standards. That kind of altitude slows cherry ripening down considerably, giving the coffee longer to build sugar and develop the layered acidity Sidama is known for across its dozens of cooperatives and washing stations.

The variety here is 74158, one of a numbered series of selections released by Ethiopia's Jimma Agricultural Research Center (JARC). JARC's breeding programme works from Ethiopia's enormous pool of heirloom and wild landrace coffee, rather than crossing in foreign genetics, selecting plants for disease resistance, yield, and cup quality while keeping them genetically close to the country's indigenous varieties. Numbers like 74158 have become something specialty buyers look for specifically, precisely because they trace back to that heirloom stock rather than a generic commercial hybrid.

This lot is processed as a natural — the whole ripe cherry dried intact, with the fruit's sugars and mucilage left in direct contact with the bean throughout drying rather than washed away beforehand. It's the traditional method across most of Ethiopia's smallholder farms, and it's the process most responsible for the fruit-forward, dense sweetness Ethiopian naturals are known for.

In the cup, that combination of altitude, heirloom variety, and natural process shows up clearly: blueberry sits up front, backed by white grape's more delicate sweetness, with dried jasmine adding a floral lift that lingers into the finish. It's a coffee that reads as both bright and rounded at once — fruit-driven without tipping into anything jammy or heavy.

Freshly roasted by TANAT in Paris and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.