Yirgacheffe

Yirgacheffe is a small zone inside the larger Sidama growing area, and the name did more than any other to teach the specialty market that African coffee could taste floral. It sits high — most of it above 1,800 m — on deep forest soil, and the coffee grows in garden plots among food crops rather than on farms laid out for it.

What reaches the market is washed at a cooperative mill and sold under the mill's name, so a Yirgacheffe lot is traceable to a washing station and its member farmers rather than to a single grower.

The reference for floral, tea-like coffee: jasmine and bergamot over lemon and lime acidity, with a light, almost weightless body. Natural lots swap that for blueberry and strawberry without losing the perfume.

High forested plateau in the Rift Valley highlands, with reliable rainfall and deep, well-drained soil.