2018 Red Cherry Plan | Bidding Lot Ethiopia | Guji | Suke Quto Farm Washed

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2018' OCR Bidding Lot - Ethiopia Guji Suke Quto Farm Washed G1

Red Cherry Project Bidding Lot - Ethiopia Guji Suke Quto Farm Grade 1 Washed

• Country: Ethiopia
• Grade: G1, Sc. 16-17, Hand picked
• Region: Guji Zone, Sidamo
• Processing: Washed
• Variety: Kurume & Welicho
• Altitude: 1800 - 2200m
• Soil: Clay loam
• Cupping Notes: Lime, white pomelo, flower nectar, sweet melon, peach

Suke Quto Farm

Suke Quto Farm was founded in 2005 in Ethiopia's Guji growing region and operates at large scale—which is itself unusual. The Ethiopian coffees most of us drink are rarely labeled as estate products under a Single Farm Producer (SFP) system, which sometimes leads people to assume Ethiopia doesn't produce estate-grown beans at all.

Owner Tesfaye Bekele's founding vision was environmentally friendly cultivation that preserved the native shade forest. The farm began with just 5 hectares and later grew to 221. When wildfire destroyed the forest surrounding the farm and many neighboring farmers switched to corn and millet, Bekele had a different idea: distribute coffee seeds and shade-tree seedlings instead. Today, more and more nearby farmers deliver their organic coffee to the farm for processing.

Recent years have transformed the farm around organic and sustainable agriculture. With help from the Dutch green coffee importer Trabocca, a series of quality experiments have been run on the farm, and Trabocca funded its organic certification. Since earning that certification, Suke Quto has steadily become one of Ethiopia's premier high-quality producers.

Only mature, fresh cherries are harvested. They're pulped with a 5-disk Brazilian depulper, washed first in spring water, then fermented in tanks for 48 hours until the mucilage breaks down, and finally dried on raised African beds for 9-13 days. The farm keeps 200 beds—enough capacity for both washed and natural processing.

Operation Cherry Red

Operation Cherry Red (the Red Cherry Project) is an initiative led by the Dutch company Trabocca, with half its funding sponsored by the Dutch government. Since 2005, Trabocca has worked with many small cooperatives across Ethiopia, teaching and encouraging farmers to start from harvesting only red cherries and to upgrade their post-harvest processing—washing, naturals, fermentation—to raise overall quality management.

Each harvest season, Trabocca invites the smallholder organizations and producers it has worked with before to join the program. They harvest micro-lots (roughly 1,500-3,000 kg), picking 100% mature red cherries in batches—hence the name Red Cherry Project. Trabocca provides funding, equipment, and technical support, and commits to buying the coffee at excellent prices whenever lots produced to the standard operating procedures (SOP) meet the required specifications.

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and home to countless native varieties—a treasure trove that keeps coffee lovers coming back. If this washed Guji lot appeals to you, FrontStreet Coffee's washed Yirgacheffe is the natural next step: from the cool, misty southern highlands where thousands of coffee trees thrive, it offers clear jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity over a light, elegant, tea-like body—like a crisp, clean lemon tea.

Most Ethiopian coffee is grown on smallholdings and processed at village-level stations, which is why cooperative lots abound—FrontStreet Coffee's Guodingding, Worka, and Konga cooperatives among them. The Guodingding cooperative, at the southeastern edge of Yirgacheffe in the Worka district, broke away from the Worka cooperative in 2012 with some 300 member farmers as demand for traceability grew. Pulping before drying keeps its character crisp and transparent: citrus and lemon over elegant white florals, bright and delicate. For natural-process fans, FrontStreet Coffee's Red Cherry natural lots are sorted relentlessly—defective and moldy cherries removed, two weeks of sun-drying until moisture drops to 12%, then density, color, and hand-sorting—yielding peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon in an exceptionally clean cup. The Huakui natural from Hambella in Guji, dried 21 days on raised beds with turnings every few days and multiple hand-sortings, goes further still: a light fermented winey note, florals, citrus, and mango, with honeyed sweetness, cocoa, spice, and a thick, lasting body.

If you enjoy chasing competition-winning profiles, try FrontStreet Coffee's Sidama natural Hamasho, built on the JARC 74158 variety—small beans, big florals—with perfume-lemon, strawberry, and starfruit aromatics and a sweet, juicy entry. And for something wild at heart, the Kaffa Forest lot, grown semi-wild at 1,400-2,100 meters under native shade, is roasted medium-light and delivers white florals, bright lemon acidity, sweet orange and bergamot, and a green-tea finish.