Aricha
ETHIOPIA
The name of the Aricha washing station run by the Birhanu family may already be familiar to our long-time customers, as their natural-processed coffees have been featured by us several times. Aricha will not disappoint this year either: it’s sweet, clean and fruity, like a tropical cocktail.
During harvest season, which spans from October to January, six to seven hundred families of smallholders choose to sell their crop to Aricha. The coffee cherries arriving at the station are sorted by hand and then placed on raised drying beds in thin layers. The cherries are turned every 2 to 3 hours in the first few days to avoid over-fermentation and mold growth. Depending on the weather, 4 to 6 weeks later the beans are transported to Addis Ababa, to BNT Coffee’s central warehouse, where the final hulling, sorting and export preparation takes place.