Ethiopia Agaro Gera Washed Espresso

About the Coffee

Djimma is one of Ethiopia's largest coffee-growing regions, home to the Oromo people, one of the country's oldest and most populous groups. This lot comes from the Gera district, which sits at 1,850 meters. Getting there from Addis Ababa takes a 40-minute regional flight to Djimma, then a four-hour drive. The coffee grows as Ethiopia landraces, the wild and semi-wild varieties native to the country's forests.

Farmers live no more than 20 minutes from the washing station and bring their cherries in by motorcycle, horse, or donkey to nearby collection centers. They intercrop coffee with native shade trees like banana, which help feed the soil, and collection centers turn leftover cherry waste into organic compost that goes back to the producers. At the central station, the coffee ferments in cement tanks for 48 to 72 hours, then dries under parabolic covers for up to 10 days depending on the weather.

About Ethica Coffee Roasters

The name Ethica comes from Spinoza's Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, a 17th-century philosophical work about aligning actions with reason and virtue. That framing guides how the Toronto-based roaster approaches sourcing: they look for green coffee they can stand behind and try to tell the story behind each lot rather than letting it disappear into a generic blend.

"There is an Ethica coffee that stands out in my mind - a Washed Castillo from Wilton Benitez that had rosemary as a tasting note. Yes, rosemary. I remember looking at that tasting note in disbelief, and then experiencing about the same disbelief by how much I loved the rosemary flavour!"

- Dean, Director of Coffee