Which Ethiopian Coffee is Best? What Variety? Is Heirloom the Finest Ethiopian Variety?

An Introduction to Heirloom Coffee

When most of us first get into coffee, we learn about Typica and Bourbon, the two great founding varieties, which over time mutated and crossbred into Caturra, Catuai, and many others. In recent years, though, the word "Heirloom" keeps appearing — yet it never shows up in the variety pedigrees we studied. So what exactly is "Heirloom"?

The term is sometimes applied to coffees introduced to the Americas and Asia over a century ago, but it is used most often for African coffees, especially those from Ethiopia. "Heirloom" emerged during the specialty coffee boom: when green-bean buyers visited the origins — Ethiopia in particular — they could not identify the varieties they were buying, so they lumped everything together as Heirloom.

Which means the "Heirloom" coffee we drink is probably not one single variety at all.

Yet according to local green buyers in Ethiopia, locals can indeed tell the varieties apart — they simply don't use scientific names or the vocabulary familiar to the specialty community, relying instead on local languages and their own identification standards. That is why buyers purchasing Ethiopian coffee today distinguish lots by location, altitude, and cupping score rather than by variety, likely a pragmatic response to just how complex the varieties are.

Here the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre (JARC) deserves mention. This government-run research institution is dedicated to classifying and cataloging Ethiopia's vast and tangled array of coffee varieties so they can be better conserved.

Progress has been made, but extending these standards to thousands of smallholder farmers and getting everyone to classify under one unified system still has a long way to go. Even so, the effort clearly serves the fast-growing specialty coffee industry — and, in time, the incomes of the farmers themselves.

Knowledge point: Coffees of the Arabica and Robusta species are divided into single-origin and espresso coffees based on how the beans are combined.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, holds countless native varieties — the treasure that makes "Heirloom" such a wonderfully varied label. To taste what those wild genes can do, start with FrontStreet's washed Yirgacheffe: brewed from beans grown above 1,800 meters in a region that is spring-like all year, cool and misty, it offers clear jasmine florals woven with bright citrus acidity, a light, elegant, tea-like body that drinks like a clean, refreshing lemon tea. For a darker, fruitier expression of the same genetic wealth, FrontStreet's natural Red Cherry Yirgacheffe uses only fully ripe, defect-free cherries, sun-dried and repeatedly sorted so every bean is specialty grade — expect peach, cocoa, honey, and lemon in a cup that is clean yet richly fruity.