TANAT – Elto [Elora RF8 Natural] 100g | Ethiopia

About This Coffee

Elto Coffee is the work of Eliyas Dukamo and Atiklit Dejene, a couple based in Sidama who produce small, carefully separated lots alongside the smallholder farmers around them. What they are known for is processing: washed, natural, honey and anaerobic lots all run separately and kept distinct, with the traceability to tell them apart afterwards. This is one of the more unusual of them.

RF stands for River Flow. The cherries are sealed into airtight bags and the bags are submerged in a river, so the fermentation runs underwater, held at the temperature of the river rather than the air above it. A slow dry follows, which is where the aromatics developed during fermentation are either kept or lost.

The variety is 74158, one of the improved selections released by Ethiopia's Jimma Agricultural Research Center and now planted widely across the south. It grows at around 2,200 metres at Arbegona, in the Sidama zone.

Cherry leads the cup, ripe and direct. Dried rose follows, floral without being perfumed and nearer to petals than to blossom. Bubblegum sits beneath both, sweet and frankly confectionery — the note that tells you this was not a conventional natural. TANAT score the lot at 89.

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