The Resilient Helena Estate Owner: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Natural Process

Professional coffee knowledge exchange, more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style)

FrontStreet Coffee - Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Helena Natural Introduction

The natural processing method is Ethiopia's most traditional way of handling coffee. After harvesting the fresh cherries, the fruit skin and pulp are not removed, and the entire fruit is dried under the sun. Helena learned the craft from her father - very slow natural drying, which results in very sweet and flavorful coffee. Rigorous production processes and quality control also make her natural processed coffee exceptionally clean. The elegant floral notes come from the extremely high altitude, where cherries mature slowly in the cold climate environment.

Helena (Heleanna Georgalis) herself is not a coffee farmer. She owns a green bean export company and a washing station in the Yirgacheffe area, processing ripe cherries purchased from coffee farmers around Yirgacheffe. This coffee comes from Hafursa, Wogida, and even as far as Idida, dried naturally on raised African beds. The natural drying process is very slow but must be very precise - a trick Helena learned from her father Yanni Georgalis.

Yanni Georgalis founded Moplaco in 1972 and was a third-generation coffee exporter. Yanni was highly respected both within Ethiopia and internationally, not only for his coffee quality but also for his fair and honest business practices. After her father's passing, Helena bravely maintained her father's Moplaco legacy while also developing her own approach. Ethiopia's overall coffee production environment and auction system are extremely complex and challenging, but under her leadership, Moplaco continues to produce high-quality coffee.

Born in eastern Harar, Helena was forced to flee her home due to civil war during her teenage years. She grew up and was educated in Europe, building a very successful career in finance. She never imagined that one day she would inherit her father's business in Ethiopia and enter the specialty coffee field. In 2008, her father passed away suddenly, and Helena faced a difficult choice: either inherit her father's business and learn about coffee from scratch with no prior knowledge, or continue her successful finance career. In the end, she chose coffee.

To inherit the family business, she immersed herself completely in coffee, learning about roasting, cupping, cultivation, natural processing methods, and the global specialty coffee market. Despite frequently encountering bottlenecks, she fully grasped new trends in coffee cultivation and processing, conducted experiments, traveled worldwide, and consulted with the best coffee farmers and coffee researchers.

Yirgacheffe Helena Natural

Region: Yirgacheffe

Altitude: 1700-2000m

Variety: Heirloom

Processing Method: Natural

Flavor: Tropical fruits, cranberry, delicate floral notes and acidity

Knowledge Point: Ethiopia holds an ancestral position in the coffee world, being the birthplace of Arabica beans and currently Africa's largest Arabica-producing country. The Kaffa Forest in Ethiopia is even known as the "coffee gene bank."

In Brief: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research house dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation to help more friends fall in love with coffee. Every month, we hold three coffee promotion events with significant discounts because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends enjoy the best coffee at the lowest possible price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past 6 years!

END

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473