Nectar Kiss: What Varieties and Flavors? Honey Processing Process Adds Honey to Coffee Beans?

Nekisse: Nectar from Shakisso

Nekisse was born in 2009, its name a contraction of "Nectar from Shakisso" — a nod to the town in Ethiopia's Sidamo province whose nectar-sweet coffee inspired it. The profile that earned the name: a creamy, velvety texture, dense berry-jam sweetness, and, in some lots, citrus and mixed tropical fruit. Though the first lots came from Shakisso itself, later Nekisse harvests come from the Wellega and Sidama regions, keeping the name as a tribute rather than a geography lesson. Its producer, 90+, holds that Nekisse grown in Sidamo keeps the original honey and berry character that sets it apart from every other Ethiopian coffee.

Nekisse N2 at a Glance

Origin: 90+ Ethiopia, Wellega and Sidama regions

Variety: Ethiopian indigenous (heirloom) varieties

Level: 12

Altitude: 1,750–2,000 meters

Processing: Natural

Flavor: clean, multi-layered mouthfeel; peach, berries, and passion fruit balanced against cream and milk chocolate. As the cup cools, subtle florals, blueberry, fragrant wood, and cocoa keep emerging.

So What Is Honey Processing?

No honey is involved — the name refers to the sticky mucilage left clinging to the bean. When Costa Rica invented the honey process, the goal was exactly this: boost sweetness and fruit aroma. In honey processing the skin is removed but the mucilage (the mesocarp) stays on the seed while it dries slowly in the sun, letting the bean absorb the fruit sugars and aromatics from that layer. Fans of the name offer a second explanation: a mucilage-coated bean simply looks like it has been dipped in honey.

The craft is in the drying. Over 1–2 weeks of exposure, the parchment beans must be turned every few hours for even drying, and after dehydration they rest in wooden containers to mature. By comparison, the pulped natural (semi-natural) method is far simpler: machine drying plays a bigger role, the beans spend only 2–3 days on the drying beds, and more mucilage is scraped off along the way. Less mucilage, less time, less intensity — which is why the honey spectrum (yellow, red, black) is graded by how much fruit layer remains.

Knowledge point: while we're on process trivia — Pacamara is a hybrid variety discovered in El Salvador in 1950, a cross between Pacas and Maragogype.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If Nekisse's berry-and-honey style sounds like your cup, FrontStreet Coffee's natural Red Cherry lot from Yirgacheffe delivers a close cousin: only fully ripe cherries are picked and defect-sorted, then sun-dried for two weeks so the cherry's sugars infuse the bean, with moisture dropping to 12% before hulling, density and color checks, and a final hand sort. The cup shows peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon — remarkably clean for a natural.

For a deeper dive into Ethiopian heirloom fruit, FrontStreet's Huakui natural from Hambella in Guji, Sidamo dries cherry on raised beds for 21 days, turned constantly and hand-sorted every three to five days to keep mold and earthiness out. Roasted medium-light, it offers a light fermented wine note, florals, citrus, and mango, with honeyed sweetness, a cocoa undertone touched with spice, and a thick, lingering body — the full-throated version of everything that makes honeyed, fruit-forward Ethiopian coffees so beloved.