Ethiopia Desta Gola

This is a traditional double-washed coffee from Gedeo, Ethiopia (1650-2700 MASL), produced by farmer Desta Gola and the Adame Gorbota Cooperative. The flavor profile is complex and iconic, centering around lemony citrus, peachy stone fruit, and intense floral and tropical mango notes.

This is the 3rd year that Desta Gola’s delicate, nuanced, and delightful washed coffee has come up for Royal, and they have consistently produced top-tier coffees. Once again, Desta Gola delivered a stunning coffee that nearly left us speechless at the cupping table.

Hear more from the Team at Royal Coffee: The coffee’s floral notes represent a really interesting and somewhat subtle intersection between elegant flowers, warm spice, and sweet herbal tones. We noted black tea, vanilla, rosemary, lemongrass, chai, cardamom, juniper, and jasmine. It’s a generous coffee, both forgiving in the roaster and easy to manage for the barista, offering copious complexity and yielding effortlessly enjoyable results.

The Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) creation in 2008 significantly limited full traceability back to specific farmers. In response, Royal established the Single Farmer Lots Program to separate single farmer lots from the larger cooperative blends sold through the ECX. Returning to Royal with another amazing harvest, Desta Gola cultivated this single farmer lot on his 10-acre farm near Gorbota, located in the heart of the coveted Gedeo grow Zone. Desta has been cultivating coffee since 2013 and with the help of the single lot program he has been able to sell his coffee as a micro-lot in recent years. Coffee is Desta’s main source of income to support his wife and their nine children (6 girls and 3 boys). Ripe cherries for this washed processed coffee were taken to the Adame Garbota Cooperative where Desta is a member. At the cooperative the cherries are carefully hand sorted and floated to remove less dense coffee beans, then de-pulped, fermented for 48 hours, and washed and classified again in channels. The parchment is placed on raised beds where it is hand-sorted again and dried over a period of 12 to 15 days. The parchment is often covered during the afternoons to prevent harsh drying in the intense sun. When the coffee reaches 11 percent moisture content, it is transported to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to be milled and prepared for export. This year’s harvest comes to us with a small screen size, very high density, moderately low moisture content, and stable water activity numbers.