Ethiopia – Rocko Mountain Reserve

Ethiopia – Rocko Mountain Reserve

It’s widely believed that coffee originates from Ethiopia and today there are over 1000 indigenous varieties growing wild in the mountain forests there and it is these varieties are responsible for some of the most coveted cup profiles in the world.

This year’s Rocko Mountain Reserve is a micro lot coffee grown by Tariku Mengesha. It’s a magnificent natural processed coffee that truly represents the old school traditional flavours of Yirgacheffe.

With the support of Siz Agro and Falcon Speciality Coffees we have been able to connect directly to Tariku and source his wonderful coffee. Tariku Mengesha is the sole owner and produced this natural coffee entirely on his own farms. The farms are located throughout the Banko Chelchele kebele (neighbourhood) of Gedeb
woreda in the south of Yirgacheffe and just west of the bulgy border with the vast Oromia region. Tariku applies basic good agronomic practices and keeps his field free of any weeds. Alongside coffee he grows pulse crops in his coffee field to maintain the fertility of the soil. He carries out pruning with the technical help from Technoserve and follows the practices of district Agricultural experts and process the coffee with the help of Tesfaye Roba.

This lot (Lot 1) has been processed as a traditional Natural process coffee – first the cherries are soaked to remove all immature floaters, overripe beans and foreign matter and are then drying on raised beds for 28 days. While coffee is Mengesha’s primary income, which he uses to support his family of 10 children (3 boys and 7 girls), he also grows navy beans and false banana, called “enset,” which produce no edible fruit but whose root and heart can be harvested. The average enset matures in four or five years, and the plant then provides around 80 lbs of starchy food. It is usually fermented underground for up to a year, after which the doughy substance can keep for up to a decade. While the fibers in the heart of the plant can be boiled, the most popular choice is a fermented enset “bread” or “cheese,” called “kocho” – quite strong and foreign to the western palate, but a staple in Southern Ethiopia.

As with all our Ethiopian coffees, through the purchase of this coffee we are supporting the ‘Girls Gotta Run Foundation’