ADORSI | ETHIOPIA | ARICHA

Country: Ethiopia
Region: Aricha, Yirgacheffe
Washing station: Adorsi
Elevation:1900 - 2000masl
Cultivar: Kurume
Process: Traditional washed

Import partner: Royal Coffee YVR


Notes: Peach, Floral, Coconut, Pina Colada

Adorsi is a private washing station located in the Yirgacheffe district, in the heart of southern Ethiopia’s coveted Gedeo Zone. Gedeo is a narrow section of highland plateau dense with savvy farmers and fiercely competitive processors and has been known commercially as Yirgacheffe for many years after the Yirgacheffe district itself, one of Ethiopia’s first areas to fully wash its coffee. As a coffee terroir, Yirgacheffe has for decades been considered a benchmark for beauty and complexity in arabica coffee, and is known for being beguilingly ornate and jasmine-like when fully washed, seductively punchy and sweet when sundried, and hardly requiring an introduction. 

Adorsi is a very young washing station, having only been first established in 2018. Testi Trading has grown a lot in the past few years and are a big part of the growth of independent processors and exporters in Ethiopia’s very competitive South, doing the good, laborious work of processing differentiation, traceability, and pushing quality boundaries. 

Private processors like Adorsi are admirable businesses. It’s tough being a private processor in Gedeo, as the sheer density and competition among washing stations tends to push cherry prices as high as double throughout a single harvest, and privates often don’t have the backing of a larger union to secure financing, regulate cherry prices, or bring export costs down with centralized milling and marketing. Successful private washing stations like Adorsi, then, need to be not only standout quality processors to stay afloat; they must also be excellent business developers with connections and good community standing in order to continue winning the business of farmers and buyers alike, and stay afloat for the long term. Testi Trading invests in local education among its communities, including in the Aricha kebele, where it has built two primary schools (and has already done similar work in Guji, West Arsi, and Shantawene, Sidama).