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We ship out orders every Tuesday. With the deadline for ordering on Sundays at 18:00 (CET).
We ship out orders every Tuesday. With the deadline for ordering on Sundays at 18:00 (CET).

Exploring the Gesha Village farm

This week, we're discussing the exceptional Gesha Village Estate based in Bench-Maji, Ethiopia. Founded in 2011 by Adam Overton and Rachel Samuel, this 471-acre estate can be found roughly 20 kilometers away from the Wild Gori Forests of Geisha. Over the past seven years, Adam and Rachel have painstakingly developed a coffee farm growing the highest-quality Geisha, on the doorstep of it's origin and we have been lucky enough to work with their coffee recently, featuring their Lot #42 Gori Geisha in our Membership Club, as well as working with their Lot #92 1931 Geisha in competitions. The Gesha Village Estate has a relatively short but detailed history. Beginning with the seed selection, Adam and Rachel scrutinized wild forest samples to identify specific wild Geisha varieties to later cultivate. This care continued to nurturing the plants in their nursery phase, transplanting and planting them with care, and following best agronomical practices intending to them. As the nurseries developed, they later began to streamline their efforts, reducing the original six cultivated varieties to three: ● Gori Forest Geisha. This original heirloom Geisha variety accounts for about 40 percent of the plants at Gesha Village. In the cup, it has notes of rose, strawberry, ripe red fruits, and blueberry. This variety replicates the genetic diversity within the Gori Gesha forest. ● Geisha 1931. This is a selection made from the diverse forest population that closely resembles Panamanian Geisha.

This selection was made by looking at the plant morphology, bean shape, and size, as well as cup profile. Its cup profile contains notes of honeysuckle, ripe yellow fruits, and lime. ● Illubabor Forest 1974. About a third of Gesha Village is planted with this disease-resistant cultivar obtained from the research center in Ethiopia. Named after the 1974 expedition that brought back the selection, this cup has notes of spice, dried fruits, and chocolate. To obtain the highest quality, they then planted these trees at a moderate density of 2,000 trees per hectare, pairing them with more than 30,000 native shade trees to provide the proper balance of biodiversity and create a sustainable ecosystem for the coffee. The estate now boasts over 700,000 trees, at least half of which descend from the Gori Gesha Forest samples. If you're interested in learning more about this particular estate, you can visit their website here: http://geshavillage.com/

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