Sidama is Ethiopia’s leading region in coffee production, and it is not uncommon to find some of these coffees sitting above 90 points. Whether it is due to the rich soil qualities, the abundance of water or the newly declared independence of the Sidama Region from the SNNRP, Sidama specialty coffees have been turning heads for years, including ours at Project Origin.

At the washing station near the town Nansebo, you will find colours everywhere
– the red in the soil, the crystal blue in the sky, twenty shades of green in the
forests, the trail mix of browns in the discarded pile of beans that do not make
the cut, tossed beside the warming honey-yellow of the chosen processed
green beans that sit in mountains on coloured plastic sheets under the shade of
a make-shift marquee. The workers sit amongst these beans in the little valleys
of space as they sort through the good from the bad, ultimately compiling wha