Guji Megado (Ethiopia) coffee 1kg

A kilo bag of Guji Megado coffee from Ethiopia. In your choice of grind or whole beans, the coffee is sent to you direct from our roastery at Tate Britain, with a label featuring an image of JMW Turner’s The Blue Rigi, Sunrise, 1842.

Coffee by Tate is a vibrant community-led non-profit business that helps fund Tate Gallery and champion coffee producers and professionals of all genders throughout the coffee value chain. Our range of coffees is comprised of individual, community and family producers and designed to reflect the seasonality, diversity and quality of coffee grown across Africa and Latin America. Our range of coffees are the results of projects, relationships or initiatives that we have instigated or supported in producing communities, with the help of our partners, and changes seasonally. This is a more sustainable process that ensures the highest quality yield and allows us to work with more producers.

Tasting notes: Blueberry, Sencha, Fruit Pastilles
Producer: Bette Buna
Location: Megadu, Guji
Process: ‘Kickstart’ Natural
Variety: 74112, 74110
Size: 1kg

The ‘kickstart’ process was developed by the processing team at Bette Buna as a way to concentrate the sugars and change their structures before the normal natural processing begins. After taking the cherries to the wet mill, the team gave them a ‘kick’ by putting them in an anaerobic environment for a short amount of time before continuing processing. Not long enough for official fermentation to begin, but long enough that the structure of the sugar within the cherries changed. This produces lots with more sweetness and body on top of the standard Sidama natural profile.

Keep your coffee sealed in the bag and store in a cool dry place away from sunlight. Use within 3 months.

About our producers

Since establishing 5 years ago in Sidama, Bette Buna (which translates to ‘House of Coffee’) have now expanded their impact to Megadu. Bette Buna have a small model farm of their own in Guji, and work with local chiefs to improve processing on their lots as well. Megadu is part of the Shakiso Woreda of Guji and is one of Guji’s most remote communities. The region is very mountainous and densely forested. The soil is rich and the potential for coffee is spectacular, making it one of the most exceptional coffee growing regions in the world.

Coffee production in Ethiopia accounts for about a third of the country’s GDP but more than 90 percent of people working in coffee don’t make a liveable income. Bette Buna has set out to change that in their community. They teach their community farmers to improve their soil, grow back agro-forest systems, and teach the importance of picking ripe cherries. Ripe cherries weigh more and produce better coffee, so the farmers get paid more by weight, and receive a quality premium.

Bette Buna is an equal opportunity employer. Their nursery employs people with disabilities (particularly deaf people), and families of people with disabilities, as well as other largely disenfranchised groups such as single mothers who struggle to find work, and especially work that accommodates childcare for working mothers in an agrarian society.

• Artwork The Blue Rigi, Sunrise
• Exhibition Turner and Constable
• Dimensions 1kg