Harrar

Harrar sits in the east, cut off from the southern growing areas by hundreds of kilometres of low, dry country. It is the oldest commercial coffee region in Ethiopia and the one least touched by the washing-station model: there is not enough water for it, so essentially everything is dried whole on raised beds or rooftops.

That makes Harrar the clearest surviving picture of what Ethiopian coffee tasted like before wet processing arrived — and the most variable, because a natural dried in a dry climate is only as good as the sorting behind it.

Wine-like and heavy: blueberry, dried fruit and dark chocolate, with a syrupy body and low acidity. At its best it is unmistakable; at its worst the ferment runs away with it.

Dry eastern highland above the Somali lowlands, with far less rainfall than the south.