Ethiopia | Guji Jigesa | Kurume & Wolisho Washed Grade 1

Jigesa (say it “Jee-gee-sa”) is a privately owned washing station in the Shakisso woreda of the Guji zone, and it is the site where Testi Specialty Coffee began. Founder Faysel Abdosh grew up in Harar and was buying and selling cherry while still at school; Jigesa, established in 2015, was the first processing site he built. “Coffee is my life, that’s why,” is how he explains it. During harvest he spends most of his time out at the stations rather than behind a desk.

Around 750 independent outgrowers deliver cherry here each day, most of them from the neighbouring kebele of Dambi Uddo and collection points at Wese and Suke. Their farms are tiny — two to five hectares is typical — and largely organic, with coffee grown as the main cash crop alongside false banana (ensete), maize and grain, under the shade of native Birbira, Wanza and Acacia trees.

The station sits at 1,851 metres, with the farms feeding it climbing to around 2,050. Cool nights at that altitude slow the cherry down, and slow cherry means denser beans and a sweeter cup. Every outgrower is paid on delivery at a premium above the government’s annual market rate, and those registered with the station receive a second premium months later, once the lot has actually sold — usually around June or July, precisely when they are preparing for the next harvest and need the money.

This lot is classified Grade 1, the highest classification Ethiopia awards. It is not a taste score — it is a defect count. Reaching it means an enormous amount of sorting has happened before the coffee ever leaves the country.

Cherry is hand-sorted and floated on arrival, then pulped within six to eight hours of being picked, so the fruit never has time to start fermenting on the skin. The parchment is graded by weight — heavier seeds are denser and sweeter — then soaked in clean water for 36 to 48 hours to let the mucilage ferment loose. It is washed again, graded a second time in the channels, and soaked for a further 12 hours, with mill workers checking the water for clarity and running the parchment through their fingers to feel when the last of the mucilage has gone.

The water comes from the Mormora and Bishan Dimo rivers. Drying happens on raised beds under a parabolic shade net over five to seven days, with the parchment hand-sorted and turned constantly, then rested in parchment until milling. Testi returns all the cherry pulp to the farmers as organic fertiliser.

This coffee is mostly Kurume and Wolisho, with other JARC selections in the mix. Both are landrace varieties — selected out of the forest generations ago and propagated across Gedeo, Guji and Sidama ever since. Six are commonly named: Bedessa, Dega, Kurume, Mique, Sawe and Wolisho. Most are named after local trees, and they differ visibly in the field; Kurume throws a noticeably smaller cherry than Wolisho.

The industry usually files all of this under “heirloom”, which is a convenient way of saying nobody bothered to look. It flattens varieties that farmers themselves name and distinguish, and it ignores the work of the Jimma Agricultural Research Center, whose numbered selections (74110, 74112, 74158 — the digits are the year they were catalogued) were bred from forest mother trees after the 1971 Coffee Berry Disease outbreak. We would rather name what is actually in the bag.

Guji sits in the south of Oromia, the traditional land of the Oromo people, bordered by Borena, Gedeo, Sidama, Bale and the Somali Region. Coffees classified as Guji come from Adoola Redi, Uraga, Kercha, Bule Hora and — as here — Shakisso.

Guji has only been sold under its own name since 2002. Before that it disappeared into the much larger Sidama classification, and its distinct character went unrecognised and unpaid-for. The zone has historically been better known for cattle and for gold — Ethiopia’s largest gold mine is at Shakisso — but as its coffee found its own name and its own price, more families moved into growing it.

Most of the Kaldi-and-the-dancing-goats story you have heard is not from here. The Oromo have their own account: the first coffee plant grew from the tears of Waaqa, wept over a servant he had punished unjustly. Coffee in Oromia is a sacred gift, and it is treated like one.

Since 2018 Ethiopian washing stations have been allowed to export directly rather than selling everything through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. That change — Vertical Integration — is why we can tell you the name of the station, the kebele and the man who built it. Under the old system this would have arrived as an anonymous Grade 1 from a region. This lot came to us through Melbourne Coffee Merchants, who buy directly from Testi.