Producer: Small holder farmers
Region: Gedeb, Gedeo Zone
Altitude: 1,900-2,200m above sea level
Varietals: Various Ethiopian Heirloom
The small village of Danche is a sub-kebele (community) within Worka Chelbessa, located in Gedeb at the southernmost tip of the Gedeo region. Over the past decade, Worka Chelbessa has gained recognition for producing exceptional coffees, making it a prime destination for coffee entrepreneur Neguesse Debela when he began his journey in the coffee industry.
In 2017, Neguesse established his first coffee site in Worka Chelbessa. By 2019, he expanded his operations, acquiring a second washing station just a few kilometers away in Danche, a smaller community within the same region. Together with his family, Neguesse runs both sites, which are renowned for producing meticulously crafted washed and natural-processed coffees. They also take innovation seriously, experimenting with unique processing methods to consistently elevate the quality of their coffee.
The Danche washing station employs Ethiopia’s traditional underwater fermentation method, a time-honored technique that enhances the coffee’s unique flavors. In this process, coffee is fully submerged in water for 36 to 48 hours, though the duration can extend depending on specific conditions. Once fermentation is complete, the coffee is dried on raised beds for 10 to 14 days, ensuring optimal quality and consistency.
Ethiopian Coffee
Among coffee-producing countries, Ethiopia holds near-legendary status not only because it’s the “birthplace” of Arabica coffee, but also because it is simply unlike every other place in the coffee world. Unlike the vast majority of coffee-growing countries, the plant was not introduced as a cash crop through colonization. Instead, growing, processing, and drinking coffee is part of the everyday way of life, and has been for centuries since the trees were discovered growing wild in forests and eventually cultivated for household use and commercial sale.
The majority of Ethiopia’s farmers are smallholders and sustenance farmers, with less than 1 hectare of land apiece. In many cases, it is almost more accurate to describe these farms as “coffee gardens” as the trees do sometimes grow in more of a garden or forest environment than what we imagine fields of farmland to look like. There are some large privately owned estates, as well as co-operative societies comprising a mix of small and more mid-size farms, but the average producer here grows relatively very little for commercial sale.
