We are thrilled to be releasing our second fresh crop coffee of the year from Bette Buna after our announcement that they're going to be our biggest supplier of Ethiopian coffee moving forward. Our first release of coffee from the Syoum family came from their farm in Guji, and this coffee is from their farm project in Sidamo. We're delighted to get to demonstrate the two VERY different flavour profiles of these two regions from the same amazing farmers. This particular lot has an unmistakable characteristic of violets that complements the fruit flavours of apricot and meyer lemon perfectly. It almost cups like a washed coffee... Truly an exceptionally clean coffee, particularly for a static cherry natural.
We think it's an exceptional coffee from exceptional people, and you can read more about them below or at their website.
There are many similarities between Skylark and Bette Buna that have us excited about working with them-- here are a few:
Equal Opportunity Employment
Bette Buna is an equal opportunity employer, which is vanishingly rare in a culture that doesn't typically provide meaningful work for differently abled or disabled people. They employ people with disabilities (particularly deaf people), families of people with disabilities, as well as other largely disenfranchised groups such as single mothers who struggle to find work-- especially work that accommodates childcare for working mothers in an agrarian society. There are many parallels between Bette Buna's work and the work we do at Pro Baristas. Both support people further from employment while building pathways back to it, not only through funded training, but by offering long-term support and community connections. We're so like-minded, in fact, that we feel compelled to work together as closely as possible!
A Completely Transparent Supply Chain
We might be dropping a bit of a truth bomb here, but coffee you buy from Ethiopia often isn't what it says on the bag. It's actually a fairly common practice for exporters to swap coffees, mislabel them, or blend them with other lots to meet a certain bag quota. Because Ethiopian coffee is so generally excellent and has distinct regional profiles, this practice often goes unnoticed or gets written off as coffee changing flavours during shipment. With Bette Buna, the traceability is exceptional. Every lot specifically names the people involved at each stage of production, from the people who picked the cherries to those who processed and milled the coffee. This level of transparency is almost unheard of in Ethiopia. Not only do we know we’re getting the same coffees we tasted pre-shipment, but we also know that the people who did the work are getting fair wages — everyone involved is adding value and being valued.
Sharing Opportunities
Coffee production in Ethiopia accounts for about a third of the country's GDP but more than 90 percent of people working in coffee don’t make a livable income. This is the main reason Hester and Dawit founded the company: To professionalise coffee and help generate sustainable incomes. Much like Skylark, they don’t just want to make money, they want to create stability and prosperity for all involved. For more info on their training programme we’d highly recommend reading more here.
Mutual Support
Finally, Hester and Dawit are remarkably collaborative and we're helping boost their enterprise by committing to buy their coffee early and often — a key way of mitigating risk for producers. This is sometimes where specialty coffee fails farmers by floating from coffee to coffee each year without long term commitments. This leaves much of the risk to producers, and we'd actually like to share the load by building in a promise to buy.
We're already communicating regularly and exchanging ideas, learning from each other and helping each other sell coffee. We're recommending Bette Buna to other roasters with similar values, and Bette Buna helps promote Skylark to coffee shops. At the end of the month, we’ll be visiting some cafes and roasteries with Hester around the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in the spirit of mutual support. This is really the dream of specialty coffee in practice: True partnerships between like-minded, values-aligned coffee people working together across the supply chain to try to change the way coffee is traded and enjoyed.
Elevation: 2000-2100 MASL
Varietal: 74112 & Enat Buna D'ara Otilicho
Cup score: 88.5
Price paid per kg: £19.60
Process: Static Cherry Natural
