Ethiopian Landrace

Ethiopia is the birthplace of Coffea arabica, and its highland forests, particularly in the southwest around Kaffa and Sheka, still hold wild and semi-wild coffee populations. Ethiopian Landraces are not a single bred variety but thousands of distinct genetic populations that evolved over a very long time and were selected informally by farmers rather than by research stations, making Ethiopia the most genetically diverse coffee growing region on earth. Almost every arabica variety grown elsewhere in the world descends, ultimately, from a small number of plants that left Ethiopia via Yemen centuries ago, so the landraces represent a genetic reservoir far broader than the Typica and Bourbon lines that fanned out globally. They are prized in the cup for their unusual range, from delicate floral and tea like profiles to intensely fruity and wine like ones, though individual landraces vary widely in yield and disease tolerance since they were never bred for uniformity.