Alo Dume, Ethiopia | 150gm

This coffee comes from Tamiru Tadesse, a specialty coffee producer based in the highlands of Sidama, Ethiopia. Tamiru has built Alo Coffee around the production of distinctive high-altitude coffees, working closely with local farmers and focusing on careful harvesting, processing, and separation of individual lots. His coffees have gained recognition for their clarity and highly expressive fruit character.

Grown between 2400 and 2550 masl, this coffee comes from an exceptionally high-altitude growing environment. The cool temperatures at these elevations slow the maturation of the coffee cherries, giving sugars, acids, and aromatic compounds more time to develop. The highland conditions of Sidama, together with traditional shade-grown cultivation, create an environment well suited to producing coffees with concentrated sweetness, bright acidity, and pronounced fruit character.

This lot is composed of the 74158 varietal, an Ethiopian selection developed through the country's coffee research programme. The variety was selected from Ethiopia's diverse indigenous coffee populations and is now cultivated in several high-altitude growing regions. At the extreme elevations where this coffee is produced, 74158 can express particularly intense fruit and floral characteristics.

The coffee is processed using the natural method, where ripe cherries are carefully selected before being dried whole with the fruit intact. The cherries are spread across raised drying beds and regularly turned throughout the drying period to encourage even moisture removal. Keeping the fruit around the coffee during drying allows sugars and fruit compounds to develop alongside the coffee, contributing to greater sweetness, body, and fruit intensity.

In the cup, this coffee presents ripe mango and bright raspberry, with a concentrated fruit sweetness and lively acidity. The combination of extreme elevation, 74158 genetics, and natural processing creates a vibrant and fruit-forward expression of Ethiopian coffee.