MALIGN PARADIGM, Ethiopia

Suitable for all brewing methods.

Roasters Notes: Blackberry Jam, Papaya, Jasmine

Bensa is the most decorated ground in Sidama. Since the Cup of Excellence first came to Ethiopia in 2020, the country's highest honours have been drawn from its slopes. Murago sits among its upper villages, at 2,340 - 2,480 MASL, at and beyond the ceiling where arabica is held to grow, among the highest grown coffee on earth. The nights run cold. Cherry hangs for months longer than lower ground allows, its sugars drawn inward, and the seed sets small and dense: below conventional screen size, carrying a concentration only slow, starved fruit can build. The picking is carried down to Atote Station.

This lot is the work of Tamiru Tadesse Tesema. An electrical engineer and former university lecturer, he founded Alo Coffee with his wife Messi in 2020, built to carry coffee that smallholders had grown for generations without ever reaching the market it deserved. Around 200 farming families deliver cherry from roughly 80 hectares of smallholder gardens. In 2021, his first Cup of Excellence, Tamiru placed two lots in the top five. His anaerobic natural took first place. His natural 74158, the same selection and process as this lot, placed fifth. Presidential Award, reserved for coffees scoring 90 and above. He has been one of the most sought names in Ethiopian coffee since.

Alo now holds stations across Bensa, Bona, Burra and Nensebo. Atote is among them, and keeps a discipline few Ethiopian stations hold: cherry taken at full ripeness and nothing less, the selection repeated through every pass across the slope.

The tree is JARC 74158, collected from wild forest coffee in Ethiopia's southwest in 1974 and released by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center for resistance to coffee berry disease. Planted at extreme elevation in Bensa, it has become one of the most decorated selections in modern Ethiopian coffee.

Natural process. Whole ripe cherry laid on raised mesh beds, the fruit left intact so its sugars move inward to the seed. Turned by hand through the heat of the day, covered against the cold of night, dried over weeks under constant watch. The cup is dense and perfumed: deep fruit sweetness, florals carried high, a weight only Bensa at this altitude produces.

The same hand, the same selection, the same process that carried him into the Cup of Excellence top five. A Presidential Award producer. A village at the roof of Sidama. A harvest measured in boxes, not pallets.