Ethiopia

Ethiopia is widely regarded as the birthplace of arabica coffee, with wild coffee trees still growing in the forests of the south-west, in and around the region of Kaffa, a name many believe gave coffee its own. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony, in which green beans are roasted, ground and brewed in front of guests over three rounds, remains a genuine part of daily and social life rather than a tourist performance, and coffee culture here predates the plantation systems of almost every other origin on this list.

What sets Ethiopia apart botanically is the sheer diversity of its coffee. Rather than a handful of commercial cultivars, Ethiopian arabica exists as thousands of indigenous heirloom landraces, many never formally named, growing wild or semi-wild under forest canopy. This diversity shows up in the cup: Yirgacheffe and Guji are prized for washed lots with jasmine, bergamot and citrus florality; Sidamo tends toward a fuller, balanced sweetness; Harar, grown in the dry east and traditionally natural (sun-dried) processed, gives a wild, fruity, almost wine-like character.

Both washed and natural processing are used extensively, often side by side within the same region, and production ranges from forest coffee and semi-forest coffee gathered from wild or lightly managed trees, through garden coffee grown around smallholder homesteads, to more organised plantations. Ethiopians also drink a large share of what they grow, and the country remains Africa's largest coffee producer and exporter of highly sought-after specialty lots.