Ethiopia Kayon Mountain Taaroo

You may remember the Kayon Mountain name from last year's Ethiopian coffee lineup. Kayon Mountain farm is owned and operated by the family of Ismael Hassen, located in the southern Guji zone of Shakiso. The farm is split into two sections, each geagraphically plotted on neighboring towns of Taaroo and Sewana, divided by the invisible border between them. This lot is called Taaroo as it is pulled from the Taaroo side, and also from small holder farmers from Taaroo town. We cupped several different "Taaroo" and "Sewana" samples in order to arrive at this particular lot (we'll launch Sewana very soon), and the cup profile has a sort of floral/tea cup profile that we think is unique to coffees from the Guji Zone. Kayon Mountain farm have built out their own wet and dry milling facilities, handling all post-harvest milling themselves, overseeing quality management, and preparation for export. Like most of the country, the farm is planted in regional, distinct local strains of coffees that have spread from the wild forest plants of western Ethiopia, to Harar in the East and to the southern districts like Guji. This particular lot was wet-processed, meaning that after the cherry is removed from the seed, the sticky mucilage layer that surrounds the bean is removed after fermenting for 24-36 hours in water (this varies from region to region), before then being removed and laid out to dry on raised drying tables. I found the coffee screen size to be very uniform, and with very few partial quaker beans that made it through the dry milling and hand sorting processes.