Aricha sits in Yirgacheffe, the stretch of southern Ethiopia that most people picture when they picture Ethiopian coffee. The hills here run between 1,950 and 2,150 meters, high enough that cherries take their time ripening, and the farms are small — fractions of a hectare, worked by families who grow coffee alongside whatever else the land will hold. What the region has always had is extraordinary raw material. What decides whether it reaches the cup is the washing station.
 

Faysal Abosh bought the Adorsi washing station in 2018. Each harvest he takes in cherry from more than 800 farmers in the surrounding hills, which makes his processing decisions the single biggest variable for hundreds of households at once. He runs it carefully. Cherries are floated the moment they arrive so anything underripe or damaged comes out before it can affect the lot. The rest is depulped and fermented for 24 hours in temperature-controlled water drawn from the Wogida river. After fermentation the coffee goes onto raised beds in a single layer and dries for fifteen days, turned constantly to keep moisture moving evenly and prevent mold.
 

The varieties are JARC selections, 74110 and 74112, bred out of wild forest coffee by Ethiopia’s Jimma Agricultural Research Center and distributed for disease resistance and cup quality. They’re planted widely across Yirgacheffe and they’re a big part of why the region tastes the way it does. Here that comes through as citrus and marmalade over a milk chocolate sweetness — clean, sweet, and about as recognizable as Ethiopian coffee gets.