a few random thoughts on ethiopian coffee

Ethiopian coffees can be great. Ethiopia was the first country that taught me how distinct and wide-ranging differences in region could mean to a cup. And was instrumental in helping me teach my palate about coffee as I went along my path towards, well, what? Wherever I am now, I guess. Harar was what I really knew from my first impressions, it was what we sold and roasted, it was always easy to pick out on the cupping table blind. When you did this, you felt like you really knew what you were doing, but as long as you had half an ounce of ability you could pick harar out of a lineup, so it wasn't really as meaningful as all that. It was still a good teacher as I think having a few slam dunks along the way to any sort of education can do wonders for confidence and getting a guy on the right track. But once you go past Harar, which is always a natural, you've got a huge array of other sorts of tastes and characteristics. And those coffees may be naturals too, though more than not they'd turn out to be fully washed coffeees, which gives you an even wider range of beauty to discover in Ethiopia. So this is why it helped me - when I was learning, picking out Tarrazus from Tres Rios coffees seemed like graduate school, while with a table full of Ethiopians a guy could pretty much always pull out the Harar, and more often than not, at least be able to describe the Yirg from the Sidamo, and tell which ones were naturals.
This conference is supposed to be focusing on the now-elusive taste of Harar. While I agree it's been more elusive lately than it was ten years ago, I know it can still be found. I look forward to the discussions of why people think this is. Want my theories? I think its complex. C'mon, I went to Evergreen - what did you expect? It's the condition of the soil and how, after all these years of calling Ehtiopian coffees passive organic, or traditional organic, the soil isn't made of the same stuff it used to be. I have every chance to stand corrected on this point, because I haven't actually been here to confirm for myself until now, but I know this about soil - you have to pay great attention to it whenever you're growing anything. My hunch is that the soil here has been left to its own for too long and has been depleted of enough of its important components to produce great coffee that it simply can't in the same volumes as it once did. It's also the weather - and how it impacts not only growing and drying in Harar, but the impact it has also on coffee as it waits to be transported or sits in warehouses. The weather can change everything. It can extend or shrink a growing season, it can rain too much or too little, early in the process, as well as late. It can also screw things up after picking as we learned in 2007. Basically, I'd ask to see the charts for the last thirty years regarding rainfall amounts and general times of year, as well as charts showing temperature swings from high to low and how those curves have changed from year to year. SO you're not expecting me to really prove anything to you here, do you? That's why I'll continue to call these thoughts hunches.