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Published: 2026-01-28 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/28, Professional coffee knowledge exchange For more coffee bean information please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account cafe_style) Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and can be directly discussed from the history of coffee consumption. In 850 AD an Ethiopian shepherd discovered that after his goats ate certain fruits they became very energetic. A group of monks who learned about this ate them but found them very bitter and were disappointed so they

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

The Origins of Coffee: Ethiopia's Rich Legacy

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and we can trace its history directly from when people first began drinking it.

In 850 CE, an Ethiopian shepherd discovered that his goats became unusually energetic after eating certain fruits.

A group of monks heard about this and tried the fruits themselves, but found them extremely bitter and disappointing. They threw the picked fruits into a fire pit, from which a wonderful aroma gradually emerged.

Intrigued by the fragrance, the monks carefully studied the roasted, aromatic fruits from the fire pit.

The monks ground the fruits into powder and brewed them as a beverage. Unexpectedly, after drinking it, they remained unusually energetic throughout the night. For this reason, the monks considered these fruits a gift from heaven.

Coffee's Global Journey

In the 11th century, coffee was first imported from Ethiopia to Arabia. Persians became enthusiastic about the stimulating effects of this "Islamic wine" made from coffee.

By the 15th century, coffee had spread through Mecca and Medina to the Arabian Empire and Cairo.

In the 16th century, coffee gradually became popular throughout Arabia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Southeastern Europe. The first coffee house was established around 1530 in Damascus, Syria.

In 1615, coffee spread throughout Europe. A Venetian merchant brought coffee beans to Western Europe, and the aroma of coffee quickly made it the most popular beverage.

The European market expanded rapidly. To increase supply, European sailors exported coffee to their colonies for cultivation and production. This was the Age of Discovery, and coffee production began to spread worldwide through this expansion.

In 1683, after the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the Battle of Vienna, they left behind 500 bags of coffee. A Polish merchant utilized these coffee beans to open Vienna's first coffee house.

As coffee cultivation developed, Ethiopia emerged as an important coffee-producing country.

In the world of specialty coffee, where washed processing has become dominant, Ethiopia has become a stronghold for natural processing, returning to traditional methods and producing coffee with rich, complex flavors.

Ethiopian Coffee Varieties

Ethiopian coffee varieties consist only of ancient native landraces.

As the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia has seen thousands of years of cross-breeding between different coffee varieties, resulting in today's thousands of distinct Ethiopian varieties.

Landraces are not varieties that technology can definitively trace as ancestors of all coffee on the market. Rather, there are too many varieties to distinguish individually, so they are collectively referred to as landraces.

Besides landraces, you might also hear terms like "Yirgacheffe variety" or "Sidamo variety." These variety names based on growing regions are not particularly meaningful, because even when distinguished by region, they don't achieve the true essence of single-variety classification.

Major Ethiopian Coffee Regions

Harari

Yirgacheffe

Sidamo

These are the most commonly found varieties in China, distributed in the eastern part of Ethiopia's Great Rift Valley. Other western growing regions are more common only in Japan or European and American markets.

To enjoy a cup of these less common coffees in China, you'll need to visit specialty shops that directly import green beans from foreign sources.

The Harari-Mocha Connection

Regarding the name Harari, you might have also seen the term "Harari Mocha." Now that we've established Harari is a regional name, what does Mocha refer to?

It refers to the port of Mocha in Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula.

The reason these two place names are combined is that in early times, Harari had to rely on shipping through Yemen's Mocha port to export Harari coffee to the world.

Perhaps due to lack of emphasis on origin at the time, people only noticed that these coffees all arrived via Mocha port. Regardless of where they were grown, they were all named after Mocha port.

Yemen also grows coffee locally. To distinguish between Harari and Yemen-produced coffee, two coffees exported from the same port were called "Harari Mocha" and "Yemen Mocha" respectively.

Because Ethiopian coffee quality is highly distinctive internationally, if management doesn't keep pace with product quality, counterfeit and pricing issues can easily arise.

Today, Harari Mocha is becoming increasingly rare in China, or otherwise very expensive.

Ethiopian Coffee Production and Naming

Over 60% of Ethiopian coffee is produced through natural cultivation methods, rather than the corporate farming common in Central and South America. Therefore, Ethiopian coffee beans are typically named after cooperatives, processing stations, small farmers, or towns.

What impact does this naming convention have?

First, we need to understand the difference between coffee named after "estates" versus coffee named after "processing stations."

An estate refers to the farm where coffee is grown. Through estates, information about consistent growing conditions can be tracked.

However, coffee cannot be shipped to Taiwan for roasting immediately after harvest—it still has fruit pulp and the beans themselves are still moist.

To transform coffee into tradable green beans, processing units must implement this step. Different processing methods create different flavor profiles in coffee.

The work of converting coffee into the green beans we see is done by "processing stations." Natural processing, washed processing, honey processing—these are all tasks handled by processing stations.

Examples of Different Naming Conventions

Huehuetenango - Injerto Estate

This coffee cannot be found under other processing station names because Injerto Estate has its own internal processing facilities.

Honduras - Santa Rosa Processing Station

This coffee is more challenging to standardize natural conditions because the beans come from small farmers near the processing station. However, the processing method is consistent.

Nicaragua - Santo Domingo Cooperative

A cooperative is nominally a jointly established processing unit. It might be established through social welfare or external subsidies, rather than being privately operated like estates or processing stations.

Despite different organizational structures, cooperatives and processing stations serve similar functions in practice.

South Minas - Otaviano Small Farmer - Pulped Natural

Named for small farmers, this literally means coffee produced by farmers from a specific town or region.

However, when coffee is collected from small farmers, there are already single processing units like processing stations and cooperatives that belong to the same type of coffee collection and production system.

Therefore, small farmer coffee might involve coffee from multiple processing stations, or small farmers might have their own processing methods and are simply called "small farmer" because they trade directly with merchants who come to purchase or engage in direct trade.

Yirgacheffe - Woke Cooperative - Alimu Small Farmer

Woke Cooperative serves as a processing unit, while Alimu Small Farmer represents small farmers from a specific area. Combined, this means coffee produced by small farmers in the Alimu region is processed and sold through Woke Cooperative.

This situation commonly occurs in water-scarce regions where building wells is extremely difficult. Therefore, precious well drilling must choose central locations between different communities.

Once wells and other facilities are established, coffee processing facilities are built at these locations for shared use by small farmers from different communities. This situation aligns with cooperative concepts while also creating scenarios with different small farmers.

Tarrazú - Las Flores Estate - Angel Processing Station - Red Honey

Having both an estate and a processing station means coffee is grown at Las Flores Estate and then sent to the processing station for processing. Information will be very complete.

Typically, the owner is the same person in such cases. However, the estate and processing station handle other businesses separately, so they are named independently.

Understanding Coffee Naming Logic

If you want to understand coffee naming logic, I think you first need to be very confident in your own logical thinking.

The Famous Yirgacheffe

Before gaining global attention, Yirgacheffe was already a sought-after coffee. At that time, Yirgacheffe didn't have the complete and diverse production and processing units it has today—there were just many traders competing for the beans.

Due to the trading environment at the time, merchants unilaterally pressed prices down aggressively, causing Ethiopian regions to never achieve better income despite efforts to increase supply.

For the self-sufficient Ethiopian people, coffee was a crop for social interaction and small-scale cash conversion.

It wasn't until before 2000, when the government restricted domestic coffee sales to favor foreign exchange, that the local population began to feel the impact of this coffee trading environment.

With supply unable to meet demand and prices continuously pressed down, merchants realized that cost-cutting strategies had reached their limits.

Coupled with the rising trend of origin-focused specialty coffee, merchants changed their strategies one by one, shifting from price-cost strategies to production-oriented assistance. Through supporting production, they gained direct relationships that others found difficult to compete for.

Yirgacheffe is not only an indispensable single-origin coffee but also possesses an irreplaceable brand. To secure this patent, Starbucks even registered "Yirgacheffe" as a trademark in 2004.

It wasn't until 2007, when the government filed an international lawsuit, that the Yirgacheffe coffee name was liberated.

Originally part of the Sidamo region, Yirgacheffe gradually became independent in regional classification due to its outstanding citrus and jasmine floral characteristics.

The Sidamo and Yirgacheffe regions support each other. Although Yirgacheffe possesses exceptionally high quality, Sidamo is often used as a substitute for Yirgacheffe in blends for practical purposes.

Ethiopian Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's freshly roasted single-origin Ethiopian coffee beans—such as Yirgacheffe and Sidamo—offer excellent guarantees in both brand and quality, suitable for brewing with various equipment. More importantly, they offer exceptional value for money. A half-pound (227g) bag costs only around 70-90 RMB. Calculating at 200ml per cup with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, one bag can produce 15 cups of specialty coffee, with each cup costing only 5-6 RMB. Compared to cafés selling cups for tens of RMB, this represents extremely high value for money.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find both famous and lesser-known beans. They also provide online store services: https://shop104210103.taobao.com