Yirgacheffe      1700-1900 masl

 Region/Zone          Elevation   

 

Pulping process       Cultivar    

 

     Picked in              Landed in

 

Gelana Abaya is another gem of a subregion in the SNNPR region. This area is nestled between Lake Abaya on the west and the town of Yirgacheffe on the East.Gelana Abaya Woreda produces some of the best naturals in Yirgacheffe. Home to the Tore people the region counts more than 9,000 small producers with plots averaging 3.5 hectares.

Most producers interlace their coffee with other crops such as maize, beans & sugar cane. While these producers are not certified, they practise organic farming, using no chemicals on their plots they instead recycle discarded coffee cherry as compost.

Each producer will carry their ripe cherries to one of five wet mills in Gelana Abaya. Once received at the mill the coffee is given a second pass to ensure that only the best, ripe cherries are dried. According the common Yirgacheffe practises the coffee is covered during the peak of the day (11am-3pm). Gelana Abaya’s methods differ, in that the coffee gets an extended open period in the evening, as late as 11pm. These practises, and the local climate, allow the coffee to be dried carefully for 15-21 days.

Since 2008, much if not most of Ethiopia's coffee goes anonymously through the privately owned, government warehoused Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX).  Aside from cooperatives and large estates, coffees are sold through the ECX to exporters and in the processes re-branded by region. This lot was marked "Gelana Abaya", which used to be a district of the Oromia region in the southern zone of Borena; now, Gelana and Abaya are separate districts, but coffee from them can be marked as Gelana Abaya.