mie

so, almost everyone's newest fling in coffee seems to be the operation cherry red project in ethiopia. the project in itself is pretty self explaining - picking only the ripe cherries makes cleaner, riper and more complete cups of coffee in the end. KAFFA has these days our first new crop arrivals directly from ethiopia in stores - and all of them are labeled OCR - washed and sun dried ("natural"). cupping the first production roast this morning really convinced me that the cleanliness of these coffees must be referred to as exceptional.

the project was started with 1 million euro funded by the dutch government and the eu and the project was initiated by dutch coffee trader and ethiopia specialist menno sims and his trading company trabocca in cooperation with their customers. the money has been invested in various parts of the coffee processing and trading operations in the coffee growing regions yirgacheffe, sidamo and limu. robert and i cupped with menno in amsterdam in april, and he explained back then that there are several goals about these project. over all, it is all aiming at improving the cup quality, but it's also about developing an understanding for what this means amongst the people in coffee. if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. if you teach him how to fish, he will have food for life. um. still with me?

firstly, it's about investing in new, environmentally friendly machinery - pulping machines, dry-hullers, graders, drying tables etc. secondly, it's hiring acknowledged experts like agronomists and cupping trainers. this is to pass on and develop the local expertise amongst the growers and in that way also be sustainable. trabocca is also working on the packaging of greens (as most exporters are these days) - vacuum or similar and in addition they are supporting local administration - management, banking and documentation is all done from origin.

and as always - it makes a lot of sense to pay more money for more carefully picked and sustainable processed coffee when this comes through so clean and complete at the cupping table.