Ethiopia | Gesha Village Gesha 2018 | Green Top Gesha Lot 104 | Natural

Gesha Village Gesha 2018 - Green Top Gesha Lot 104, Natural

Gesha Village Estate, Lot 104, Gesha Natural.

Ethiopia, Gesha Village, Gesha, natural process, Lot 104.

Cupping Notes:

An intense dry fragrance of blueberry and florals, with strawberry and peach - remarkably sweet.

A cup with floral and fruity nuances carried on a purple-toned profile.

Blueberry, Kyoho grape, peach, blackcurrant, and jasmine.

A sweet finish laced with violet.

Coffee Details:

Country: Ethiopia

Region: SNNPR

Zone: Bench Maji Zone

Forest: Gori Gesha Forest

Estate: Gesha Village Coffee Estate

Owners: Adam Overton & Rachel Samuel

Altitude: 1,900 - 2,100 meters

Annual Rainfall: approximately 1,500 - 2,000 mm

Processing Method: Natural

Anyone who caught Willem Boot's memorable lecture at the November 2016 coffee exhibition will surely remember his winding journey as a coffee farmer and his expedition to trace Gesha back to its roots. The arrival of this lot has been long anticipated.

Estate owner Adam Overton is an American documentary filmmaker; his wife Rachel Samuel is an Ethiopian-born photographer. In 2007 the couple was commissioned to Ethiopia to film a documentary about coffee, and as the project deepened their connection with the land and its people, the dream of planting their own estate began to take root.

Everything accelerated once they met Willem Boot. Even the site selection, variety choice, and processing methods are closely tied to him, and to this day he still visits the estate every year, staying on to oversee post-harvest processing. 2016 was only the estate's second harvest season.

This lot comes from the Gori Gesha variety - the wild Gesha that grows beneath the green canopy of the Gori Gesha Forest - processed as a natural. With one subtle difference from the traditional Ethiopian approach: on Willem Boot's professional advice, Gesha Village follows Panamanian natural-processing technique, even importing the materials for its raised African drying beds from Panama.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Gesha - the English rendering of "Geisha" - is one of the most beloved of all Arabica varieties, having won over countless coffee lovers with its singular florals and superb sweet-tart acidity. Low yields, weak disease resistance, and demanding farm management keep its price high, so it pays to know the different Gesha lines and where the value lies.

Panama is where Gesha made its name. Discovered by Esmeralda Estate and entered in the Best of Panama competition, it stunned every judge with an average cupping score of 94.6 - a competition record - and became an overnight sensation. Esmeralda's Gesha now comes in two tiers: the Red Label "Esmeralda Special," grown at 1,600-1,800 meters, cupping above 90 points, with each fully traceable batch drawn from a single plot (FrontStreet's Red Label comes from the Jaramillo block); and the Green Label "Private Collection," a blend of batches from multiple plots that expresses Esmeralda's signature high-altitude Gesha character at a friendlier price - exceptional value. Newcomers who simply want a first taste of the famous "Gesha flavor" will do best with the entry-level FrontStreet Boquete Gesha from Panama: classic orange-blossom honeyed sweetness, an oolong-tea feel, delicate fruit acidity, and clearly defined layers.

Ethiopia, Gesha's birthplace, has its own estate answer: Gesha Village, founded by a couple 12 miles from the Gesha forest on 475 hectares, growing three Gesha varieties - Gori Gesha, Gesha 1931, and Illubabor Forest - with a grading system even more involved than Esmeralda's: Gold Label RARITIES, Red Label GROWERS RESERVE, Green Label SINGLE-TERROIR, and Chaka lots. The Gold Label, a Gesha 1931 making up just 10% of the farm's output, is its top coffee outside auction lots and a frequent competition pick; FrontStreet's Gold Label lot is a meticulous natural of complex, layered flavor, from the distinctive dry fragrance to the slurping profile and lingering finish. The Red Label, a Gori Gesha making up 15% of production, scores 88 or better on the SCA 100-point scale and is the farm's single-terroir series, with every lot number fully traceable to its farm block, variety, and processing date. For a gentler entry into Ethiopian Gesha, the FrontStreet Genlana Gesha comes from a 2014-founded washing station run by Israel Degefa on the border of Kochere and Genji Abaya, where hand-picked ripe cherries dry on raised beds for 14-20 days; at a medium-light roast it shows bright citrus acidity, elegant ginger-flower aromatics, the full sweetness of ripe fruit, and a fine, silky finish.

To brew Gesha well: it is a medium-light, floral-fruity coffee with dense beans that can sink and clog the dripper, so grind coarse enough for 78% passage on a Chinese-standard No. 20 sieve (about the size of fine granulated sugar) and use 91°C water. FrontStreet brews 15g of coffee in a Hario V60 at a 1:16 ratio in three stages: pour to 30g and bloom 30 seconds, then pour in small circles to 125g, wait for the bed to drain to half, pour again to 225g, and finish draining for a total time of about 2:10-2:20. For an espresso take, the medium-roasted FrontStreet Genlana Gesha SOE pulls at 20g in, a 1:2 brew ratio, 25 seconds, into 40g of espresso - apricot, caramel, and nuts in the shot, with orange, nut, and blueberry as an americano (1:5 with 200g hot water) or a silky cream-cookie latte with 200g milk.