Nansobo sits in West Arsi, and the Debo washing station sits at 2,350 meters — about as high as coffee is commercially grown anywhere in Ethiopia. Thin air and cold nights slow everything down. Cherries take longer to ripen, beans come off dense, and sugar concentrates in the fruit in a way lower elevations can’t match. It also makes the growing harder and the margin for error smaller.

Debo is a small station. Tamiru Tadesse runs it, working with 40 to 50 smallholder farmers from the surrounding hills, and this lot comes from only the second harvest the station has processed. That’s worth saying plainly, because a station this young is still working out its own character. The profile here isn’t a house style refined over a decade. It’s a group of farmers and a processing team figuring out what this elevation can do, and the answer so far is loud.
 

The variety is 74158, another JARC selection bred from wild forest coffee for disease resistance and cup quality. It’s processed as a natural, which means the cherries dry whole with the fruit left intact around the bean. That extended contact is what produces the berry and wine character, and it’s the harder path — constant turning, close watch, no second chances if the drying goes sideways. What comes out is bright, funky, and full of fruit, a coffee with real personality rather than polish.