{"title":"Coffee Archive","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"finca-esperanza","title":"000 - Finca Esperanza","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis coffee was roasted on 9 March 2024.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA yeast-inoculated honey processed field blend from a fully-organic, semi-forest farm owned by longtime producer partner Ana Bonifasi in Guatemala.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003eFrom Christopher: \"I've purchased coffee from Ana Bonifasi and her farm Finca Esperanza since 2016. Ana's commitment to organic and regenerative practices, extensive use of shade canopy, care for the indigenous community around Cerro Pecul and notability as a woman coffee producer in an industry dominated by men makes her a shining light. This lot was exclusively processed for Aviary using a fermentation and drying protocol I designed for Ana.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":47290366853424,"sku":"000-retail","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"1kg","offer_id":47290366886192,"sku":"000-1kg","price":105.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/000-fincaesperanza2.png?v=1711050137"},{"product_id":"001-fsjm","title":"001 - Finca San Jerónimo Miramar","description":"\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis coffee was roasted on 9 March 2024.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA washed gesha grown in an agroforestry setting applying industry-leading soil fertility management practices in Guatemala.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher: \"This is my first purchase through Finca San Jerónimo Miramar, a farm I've admired for many years and whose coffee I first had the privilege of roasting in 2018 as part of the \u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003eGerms and Worms \u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003epresentation by Lucia Solis and Sam Knowlton during SCA Expo in Boston that year. FSJM's integrated agroforestry farm system is industry-leading for both economic and environmental sustainability and showcases a model for resiliency against climate change, C-market volatility, and the disruptions of global shipping leading to shortages of imported agricultural inputs. This coffee demonstrates that Panama and Colombia don't have a monopoly on excellent geshas and presents with notes of jasmine, tangerine pulp, and dark raspberry.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":47579852767536,"sku":"001-retail","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/001-SanJeronomo_8e18129f-b862-4d67-bbf0-865e896147e6.png?v=1711050175"},{"product_id":"002-maria-nieves","title":"002 - Maria Nieves","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis coffee was roasted on 9 March 2024.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eA washed gesha grown at high elevations by Maria Nieves on her Cup of Excellence winning farm.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher: \"This is my first purchase through Yellow Rooster and my first from Maria Nieves Tantalean Fernandez, whose leadership of Asprocafe \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\" data-mce-style=\"font-weight: 400;\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAlpes Andinos ensures a fair price for the members of the cooperative. While women remain both marginalized and minorities within the global supply chain, research demonstrates that involving women in finances of production leads to greater financial security and equity for producers. This coffee comes from Maria's first harvest of gesha from her 1.5 hectare, Cup of Excellence top-placing farm and exemplifies the quality potential of Peruvian coffee—presenting in the cup with notes of wild blueberry, tangerine, mandarin orange and thyme.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":47579864891696,"sku":"002-retail","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/002-MariaNieves_2a051968-319b-4b04-8b1b-203d992915f2.png?v=1711050157"},{"product_id":"003-gildardo-lopez","title":"003 - Gildardo Lopez","description":"\u003ch3\u003eA beautiful washed Pink Bourbon from Copa de Oro champion Gildardo Lopez in Colombia.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom Christopher: \"Pink Bourbon—a variety distinct from Bourbon that genetic testing has revealed to be, in fact, an Ethiopian landrace—has been a favorite of mine since they first started appearing on my cupping tables back in 2016 or 2017. Since then, we've seen an explosion of Pink Bourbon around Southern Huila. It's not surprising to me that this coffee from Gildardo Lopez—the 2022 winner of the Copa de Oro quality competition held by the exporter Osito—was one of my favorites through all three rounds of the Copa de Oro competition held in La Plata, Huila, Colombia in November 2023. In the cup, it's expressive and sweet with notes of peach candy, black raspberry, melon, and a touch of herbality.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePut this coffee into \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/03\/16\/calibration-quality-and-the-myth-of-infallibility\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003econtext\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eDue to limited availability (15kg of green) this coffee is available only in 200g boxes.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":47730570690864,"sku":"003-retail","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/003-Gildardo_b074376f-6caf-4dc1-affc-c07468d9e2ab.png?v=1711050195"},{"product_id":"004-lino-rodriguez","title":"004 - Lino Rodriguez","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eThis was among my favorite of Aviary's releases in 2024 and I was thrilled to discover some 2.35kg of green still vacuum-sealed and buried in the freezer. For our 2025 freezer sale, we roasted it hot and fast on our P3000 in an effort to see just how expressive we can make this coffee. It came out a bit lighter than our 2024 release—but still tastes bright and jammy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA stunning expression of a washed Pink Bourbon from six-time Cup of Excellence awarded producer Lino Rodriguez in Colombia.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I first purchased coffee from Lino Rodriguez in 2017 after being paired with him by Salomé Puentes, then of Caravela Coffee (now of Teco Coffee in Guatemala) to conduct processing experimentation in an effort to improve the cup characteristics of the Castillo on his family farm through controlled fermentation. Lino is a quality-driven producer who studied agriculture in university; he manages his family's farm and processing methodically and with an openness to new practices. At the blind calibration cupping with Lino, there was a coffee that scored higher than the rest on the table—a coffee that was later revealed to be a washed Pink Bourbon grown by Lino. The erroneously-named Pink Bourbon, now understood to be an Ethiopian landrace, has quickly gained favor among buyers and producers alike both for its resistance to disease and roya, high productivity and high quality potential. Lino's was the first I tasted—and since then, he has supplied seedlings to countless producers in Palestina on his way to wins and top-placements in the Cup of Excellence in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. This coffee is an exemplar of the quality I hope to find in a Pink Bourbon that alludes to its Ethiopian lineage and presents in the cup with complexity and tangy-savory-sweet notes of fig, nectarine, blood orange and lychee.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead the blog post to put this coffee into \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/03\/31\/the-cost-of-quality\/\"\u003econtext\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":47730838110512,"sku":"004-retail","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/Tiles-23mar-01.png?v=1711200964"},{"product_id":"006-jhon-didier-trujillo","title":"006 - Jhon Didier Trujillo","description":"\u003ch3\u003eFREEZER SALE UPDATE (11\/26):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eOver the past year, we roasted two versions of this lot, using two profiles; this was a result of the fact that between the original xbloom release and its subsequent wide release, we replaced a halogen lamp on and recalibrated our Stronghold S9X. As a result, there was a difference between the two roasts. Like many, I preferred the original xbloom profile and so, for this freezer release, did my best to recapture that roast. The dry milling on this lot was exceptional; we removed just 0.02% of the batch through optical sorting. The final cup starts and finishes sweet and juicy with tamarind, slight herbality, caramel, white grapefruit and orange.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis washed Chiroso lot is the entirety of Jhon Didier Trujillo's first harvest—as well as his first export—and presents with a dense, sugared cup with bright tamarind-like acidity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"When my friends at Unblended told me that they were working with a new producer in their network—one who had never exported to the U.S. before—I asked to taste the coffee and to learn more. Even in years when prices in the local market are strong, coffee as an export product offers the potential for stronger prices and greater resiliency to market volatility. I knew that the work Unblended was doing in opening specialty export channels could be transformative for a smallholder; the other side of that equation is that it requires a buyer. I cupped Jhon Didier's coffee blind on a table with 11 other offers from three exporters and fell in love with its sweetness, structured acidity and intensity of flavor. I was surprised to learn that this was not just his first export—but also his first year of production.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"In the best case, it takes a coffee tree three years to produce; typically, though, it can take anywhere from 4-5 years for a tree to reach full production. This means that for someone looking to begin growing coffee, it's an investment—one with an uncertain outcome. When he decided to begin growing coffee, he planted what he called \u003cem\u003eCaturra Chiroso \u003c\/em\u003eusing seeds he got from Carmen Montoya, whose father got seedlings from Fabian Castrillon, who brought the trees to Urrao from Sonson. Genetic testing performed using a separation of two different varieties called \"Chiroso\" in a collaboration between Unblended and Sey revealed the coffee's true genetic origins as a likely Ethiopian landrace—origins that explain the coffee's high quality potential. Seeking a high price for his coffee, knowing that quality was important, and hearing that Chiroso from Urrao has become well-known among specialty buyers, Jhon planted exclusively Chiroso on his farm—5,000 trees under the shade of lulo and banana trees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"In his first harvest, those trees produced just 116kg of exportable green coffee, all of which I purchased for Aviary. The first 24kg of the lot was released through \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" title=\"xbloom\" href=\"https:\/\/16ff5c7r.r.us-west-2.awstrack.me\/L0\/https:%2F%2Fxbloom.com%2Fchristopherferan\/1\/0101018f376b5c4d-3b4c7578-6657-4bef-b14a-6da5deaeac79-000000\/jPCHzhzg6v9j_YGDHUXRIv9oxR0=373\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/16ff5c7r.r.us-west-2.awstrack.me\/L0\/https:%2F%2Fxbloom.com%2Fchristopherferan\/1\/0101018f376b5c4d-3b4c7578-6657-4bef-b14a-6da5deaeac79-000000\/jPCHzhzg6v9j_YGDHUXRIv9oxR0=373\" target=\"_blank\"\u003exbloom\u003c\/a\u003e and was previewed at SCA Expo in Chicago in April.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis coffee is vibrant, tropical, dense and sweet with notes of brown sugar, tamarind, apricot and grapefruit with a slight florality like marigold.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/20\/varieties-of-varieties-and-mistaken-identities\/\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/20\/varieties-of-varieties-and-mistaken-identities\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe blog\u003c\/a\u003e to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":48344818221360,"sku":"006","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/006-JhonDidierTrujillo.png?v=1712006200"},{"product_id":"005-bekele-belaycho","title":"005 - Bekele Belaychow","description":"\u003ch3\u003eFREEZER SALE UPDATE (11\/26):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003ePerhaps as a consequence of resting—dense, high-grown, wet processed Ethiopians often benefit from a period of rest—or the removal of a mere 0.17% of coffee through optical sorting (bright orange quakers only), Bekele's coffee has grown only more vibrant, structured and articulated. We followed the original roast profile established May 20; the cup is floral-forward with notes of jasmine, apricot and pink peppercorn.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAn uncommon coffee—a smallholder washed coffee from the Southern highlands of Ethiopia from Bekele Belaychow, processed using a hand-pulper and a protocol devised by Christopher Feran—ripe with stonefruit, citrus acidity and gushing with floral complexity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"6 years after export liberalization, it's still rare to find single-producer, smallholder washed coffees from Southern Ethiopia. Large-scale, privately-owned washing stations dot Sidama, Guji and Yirgacheffe and process lots using cherry collected from hundreds or thousands of farmers each; without access to smaller-scale mills, smallholder-exporters nearly exclusively produce cherry-dried naturals. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"In December 2023, through my work with Crop to Cup, we bought Bekele, now a perennial supplier of Crop to Cup—as well as Basha Bekele and Mate Matiwos, two other smallholders in Bensa—hand pulpers manufactured by GEM Coffee Equipment, a company owned by the coffee producer whose estate served as our proving grounds for yeast fermentation in Ethiopia in 2018. Because washed coffees in Ethiopia must legally be exported, we guaranteed the purchase of any lot processed using the pulper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"This coffee, processed using a protocol I wrote, is a small piece of the resulting lot—the first single-producer, smallholder washed coffee I've ever tasted from Ethiopia, and one that showcases the dazzling potential of these coffees. It is exclusive to just Aviary and one other roaster in the world and presents in the cup with notes of nectarine, pink peppercorn, honeysuckle and bergamot with bright, structured acidity and a black raspberry finish.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/05\/07\/the-hegemony-of-poured-concrete-and-washed-ethiopians\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe blog post\u003c\/a\u003e to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is a coffee with limited availability (~30kg) and is only available in 200g boxes.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49285700780336,"sku":"005","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/005-BekeleBelaychow.png?v=1713396654"},{"product_id":"xx1-gildardo-lopez-1","title":"XX1 - Gildardo Lopez","description":"\u003ch3\u003eAviary was neither the original nor intended buyer of this coffee. This is a wildcard release—unplanned, unsequenced, a result of the chaos of the universe. This is a coffee that is as unpredictable in the cup as it is beguiling—an ultralight roast that changes with each brew but presents with articulate citric acidity and tones of blueberry.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003e\"It started with a sample representing a 30kg lot of Pink Bourbon from Gildardo Lopez that was milled by a local exporter of unknown repute; its rejection upon arrival via air shipment; and the ensuing fallout. Gildardo was never paid for the coffee he sent. To make him whole, 100% of Aviary's profits from this release will be paid directly to Gildardo Lopez.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou should expect that this coffee will lack uniformity and will not present the distinctive character signature to Gildardo's Pink Bourbon presented in AVIARY#003. In fact, I suspect this lot is likely only partially Pink Bourbon. This is a coffee you should buy because of the story, the intrigue, the mystery—and because it offers the producer a better chance to make a good price for the coffee they sent.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOver 250g of cuppings, this coffee presented differently in each cup; it always presented, though, with clean, bright, citrus-forward acidity and caramel sweetness. Some cups presented vegetal; some did not. We've modulated our roast approach to bring out a blueberry tone from this coffee that found its way to Aviary.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/14\/cupping-is-a-game-of-chance\/\"\u003ethe blog post\u003c\/a\u003e to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":48686070989104,"sku":"XX1-retail","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/XX1Tile.png?v=1718074897"},{"product_id":"007-mate-matiwos","title":"007 - Mate Matiwos","description":"\u003ch3\u003eFREEZER SALE UPDATE (11\/26):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eIn many ways, this coffee is everything I want a coffee to be; I jealously guarded the three boxes I set aside for personal consumption. For the freezer release, we did our best to recapture the magic of the original release, then passed the batch through an optical sorter to remove just bright orange quakers, removing 0.50%. We're left with a cup that is sweet, complex and ripe with stonefruit character with notes of yuzu, peach, apricot and jasmine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe companion to AVIARY#005, this is the second of our smallholder washed coffees from the 2024 harvest in the Southern highlands of Ethiopia. This coffee from \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org\/ethiopia-2024\/\" title=\"Ethiopia 2024 Cup of Excellence\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e2024 Cup of Excellence #2 winner\u003c\/a\u003e Mate Matiwos, processed using a hand-pulper and a protocol devised by Christopher Feran—is exclusive to Aviary and layered with complexity, presenting with notes of lilac, yuzu, peach and hints of blueberry.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I first visited Mate Matiwos's drying station in Keramo Soto in 2022. He wasn't there—but his eldest son, Mamush Mate, was. They didn't have any coffee to sell, and we spent more time visiting than we should have—partly because we were taken by the waterfall adjacent to his land on the Geta river, and partly because the hope of what Mamush promised on behalf of his father: that he had a higher elevation site, in Keramo, and that next year, he would sell coffee from there to us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"A year later, Mate's farm was one of our last stops on the way out of Bensa. We'd spent the week with the larger group of Bensa producers Crop to Cup purchases from, planning the year's projects—such as buying hand pulpers for Bekele Belaychow (of AVIARY#005) and Basha Bekele—but I was eager to see Mate's farm at nearly 2300 meters, planted just 5 years ago with variety 74158.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Walking his farm in Keramo, I made an immediate request to Moata: '\u003cem\u003eCould we get another pulper for Mate?'\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"Because washed coffees in Ethiopia must legally be exported, we guaranteed the purchase of any lot processed using the pulpers we provided. This lot was the result of Mate's first attempt; because the machine needed to be adjusted and because the coffee wasn't agitated sufficiently at the end of fermentation, more mucilage remained on the coffee in the first run through the process than we intended. Moata observed that it looked more like a black honey and isolated the lot, keeping it separate through to milling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The resulting 59kg of green coffee—a fermented, washed-style black honey—is exclusive to Aviary. Because of the small size of the lot, it was milled and sorted for defects by hand.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"We never tasted the coffee before it arrived to us in May 2024 via air shipment; we bought it sight unseen, cup untasted—based purely on our knowledge of the producer, his farm and confidence in the protocol. I couldn't be more thrilled with the result: a complex, tangy, vibrant cup with notes of rosehip, lilac, yuzu and peach with underlying hints of blueberry.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/05\/07\/the-hegemony-of-poured-concrete-and-washed-ethiopians\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe blog post\u003c\/a\u003e to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is a coffee with limited availability (~54kg) and is only available in 200g boxes.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49285702254896,"sku":"007","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/007_-_Mate_Matiwos_ced2a606-91fd-42d8-9a4a-ffd63be8d5e7.png?v=1719429044"},{"product_id":"xx2-pranoy-thipaiah","title":"XX2 - Pranoy Thipaiah","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThis wildcard release comes to us from Pranoy Thipaiah of Kerehaklu plantation in India; all profits from the sale of this coffee will be returned to Pranoy and Kerehaklu. This 800g nanolot is the result of Pranoy's relentless experimentation in pursuit of improvements in both quality and efficiency, and was fermented using \u003cem\u003eAspergillus \u003cspan\u003eluchuensis—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003ekoji \u003c\/span\u003etraditionally used to make shochu and sake—and a refined version of \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2021\/10\/23\/coffee-koji-and-kaapos-wbc-routine\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe \"Koji Supernatural\" protocol\u003c\/a\u003e I devised for Vergel Estate and Kaapo Paavolainen in 2021. This coffee is atypical for Aviary stylistically, blurring the lines between fruity and funky with a round mouthfeel and notes of strawberry, blackberry wine and shiro miso.\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003e\"Pranoy and I connected some years ago via Instagram, where I admired from afar the way he applied his education in biology to improve the health and biodiversity of his family's farm and process engineer the farm's postharvest practices. Kerehaklu looks more like a nature preserve than a farm—with giant Malabar squirrels and bison living in the agroforestry habitat. Pranoy was curious about the koji protocol I'd written and we began to exchange ideas about how to improve the results and predictability of the process.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the challenges Pranoy wanted to solve was how to create complexity in the cup from cherries at the beginning of harvest, which had a shorter maturation period and which may ripen unevenly. He hypothesized that Luchuensis, a species of fungi that shares the title of \"national fungi\" with \u003cem\u003eAspergillus oryzae, Aspergillus sojae\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eAspergillus kawachii\u003c\/em\u003e, with its ability to produce citric acid during the fermentation process, could improve the cup's complexity and the presentation of acidity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Using spores obtained from Europe, Pranoy processed Selection 9 Arabica—a cultivar descended from an Ethiopian variety, Tafarikela, crossed with Hibrido de Timor—and produced this 800g experimental nanolot, which he shipped via DHL for evaluation.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRevisit \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/14\/cupping-is-a-game-of-chance\/\" data-mce-href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/14\/cupping-is-a-game-of-chance\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethis blog post\u003c\/a\u003e from 2021 and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/10\/29\/fear-of-the-outsider\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003ethis blog post \u003c\/a\u003einspired about this coffee to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eKerehaklu and Pranoy photos by Alia Romagnoli\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c!----\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"2x20g","offer_id":48993834434864,"sku":"XX2","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/XX2_Tile.png?v=1725745856"},{"product_id":"008-basha-bekele","title":"008 - Basha Bekele","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003ePerhaps the most contentious and controversial of our 2024 releases, this coffee offered an incredible lens into the challenges of working with smallholder microlots in a country without infrastructure equipped to efficiently mill or export them. As we noted during the original lot, when this lot arrived, as two 60kg sacks, one was punctured; upon cupping each bag separately, I discovered that they were quite different in the cup. In an effort to create a uniform experience, I roasted each bag separately and then blended them. This may have inadvertently created some (but not all) of the oddities that many—including me—observed in this coffee: incredible cup-to-cup and bag-to-bag variance. It's tempting to regret this choice as it's suboptimal from a customer experience standpoint—but I believe it's a living testament to the beautiful chaos of coffee as an organic, agricultural, heterogenous product. \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI discovered 3 kg of green from this coffee in the freezer, still vacuum sealed, as I prepared to thaw coffee for the 2025 freezer sale. I'm not sure which bag this coffee came from—but I've thawed it to roast on the P3000 as a way to bring new life to this coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003ch3 data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe third and final of our smallholder washed coffees from the 2024 harvest in the Southern highlands of Ethiopia comes from \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org\/ethiopia-2024\/\" title=\"Ethiopia 2024 Cup of Excellence\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e2024 Cup of Excellence #1 winner\u003c\/a\u003e Basha Bekele. Processed using a hand-pulper and a protocol devised by Christopher Feran, this coffee underwent a yeast-controlled fermentation. The resulting cup is complex and bright with notes of apricot, lime, kumquat and jasmine with a blueberry-cherry undertone.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"At this point, Basha Bekele needs no introduction; the top winner of the 2024 Cup of Excellence competition in Ethiopia has built a reputation for producing exceptionally high-quality dry processed coffees at his drying stations in Bensa—in Bombe, Kokose, Shantawane and, this year, Murago. I \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/05\/07\/the-hegemony-of-poured-concrete-and-washed-ethiopians\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003efirst met Basha\u003c\/a\u003e in early 2019, but beginning in the 2023 harvest, through my work with Crop to Cup and alongside CoQua I began to collaborate more closely with Basha on post-harvest processing practices. Ahead of the 2024 harvest and his win in CoE, we focused our work on cherry sorting and selection, flotation and drying improvements—including implementing the use of shade across his drying stations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"As with Mate Matiwos (AVIARY#007) and Bekele Belaychow (AVIARY#005), we also bought Basha a GEM hand pulper. With it, Basha produced two small lots for Crop to Cup: a white honey process (using the same protocol as Mate and Bekele) as well as this one—one using an inoculation of Lalcafe INTENSO yeast to control the fermentation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The use of yeast inoculation to control coffee fermentation is a technique I've been fascinated by for nearly a decade. While traditional 'spontaneous' fermentations often offer greater cup complexity, I've enjoyed the process control, predictability over outcomes, and improvements in shelf life gained by using yeast controlled fermentation as a tool.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"For this lot, I wanted to try to create a lot that tasted like kumquats—clean, focused citric acidity with sweetness to support it—and I believed using a yeast controlled fermentation would be the way to achieve it. Because \u003cem\u003eSaccharomyces Cerevisae\u003c\/em\u003e does not generate acidity (acidity being a byproduct of bacteria in coffee fermentations), we'd need to start with the appropriate genetics and growing conditions—such as those at Basha's farm of young 74158 plantings at soaring elevations of nearly 2300 meters in Bensa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"The resulting 240kg of green coffee was split between Aviary and one other roaster; it came into Aviary's hands as a result of skittishness surrounding the shipping disruptions in the Red Sea leading to a contract cancelation. I was confident in the process, knowing how carefully controlled both the fermentation and drying process were—and happily contracted the available two bags while they were still awaiting departure at the port of Djibouti.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"And though perhaps I could attach a premium to this lot given its relative exclusivity and given Basha's ascendence through his win in the Cup of Excellence, by shipping via ocean rather than air, it reduced the cost of the lot relative to the others Aviary has offered from Ethiopia this year. Thus, I've decided to make it the most affordable of Aviary's releases to date.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\"While this is not the highest-cupping coffee Basha produced this year—nor is it technically the highest-cupping coffee Aviary has roasted from Ethiopia in 2024—it's one of my favorites: a \u003cstrong\u003ebeautiful, clean, complex, acid-foward washed Southern Ethiopian profile presenting with notes of apricot, lime, jasmine and kumquat and undertones of blueberry that cools to cherry.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/05\/07\/the-hegemony-of-poured-concrete-and-washed-ethiopians\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethis blog post\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/10\/29\/fear-of-the-outsider\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethis blog post\u003c\/a\u003e to put this coffee into context.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis is a coffee with limited availability (~96kg) and is available both in 200g boxes and 1kg bags.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUPDATE\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e2024-09-21 from CF\u003c\/strong\u003e: During receipt of this coffee at Aviary's roastery, I discovered that one of the two bags had been punctured by one of the warehouses preceding the delivery. We don't know by whom, and we don't know when—but 8kg of coffee were lost. We have updated the available quantities to reflect this. I performed a physical and sensorial evaluation of each bag; the exposure to oxygen created differences between the two bags. To create a uniform experience for customers, we will be blending these two bags (post-roast). Tasting notes have been updated to reflect this development.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49040477946160,"sku":"008-retail","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/008_-_Basha_Bekele.png?v=1725742492"},{"product_id":"009-abelardo-medina","title":"009 - Abelardo Medina","description":"\u003ch3\u003eFREEZER SALE UPDATE (11\/26):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher:\u003c\/em\u003e There's a small but vocal minority of specialty coffee enthusiasts who love very light roasts—roasts that I, as a young roaster, would have dismissed as defective, under-developed and undrinkable. As time progressed, even if it's not my preference \u003cem\u003emost\u003c\/em\u003e days, I grew to love this style of roasting—what has come to be known as \"ultralight\" or \"hyperlight\" or \"wheatgrass\" roasting. They can be a little more finicky to brew, benefitting from faster-extracting burrs, precisely dialed water chemistry as well as many weeks (or months) of rest before brewing, and so they remain quite niche. While Aviary roasts light (so light that I've heard \u003cem\u003eother \u003c\/em\u003enotable roasters reacting to Aviary's coffees the way that I once dismissed ultralight roasts), only one official release this year (001) and one wildcard release (XX1) truly fit the definition of \"ultralight.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the comments I often hear from fans of this style of coffee is, \"while I loved this release, I wouldn't \u003cem\u003emind\u003c\/em\u003e if you decided to roast a little lighter....\" And so, I've decided that our final \u003cem\u003efinal \u003c\/em\u003erelease of 2024 should be in the same ultralight style as our first release.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is our love letter to ultralight roasts: a bright, clean and laserlike presentation of this coffee and its original notes of passionfruit, nectarine, jasmine and lemon. We sorted 0.9% of this batch optically post-roast—a higher percentage owing to the lighter overall color and chaff presentation, but offset by the much-lower roast loss associated with coffee this light. Because of its \u003cem\u003every\u003c\/em\u003e light roast level, we recommend resting it for \u003cem\u003eat least \u003c\/em\u003e6 weeks prior to enjoying—it would likely benefit from 8 weeks (or more). \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOur final release of 2024 is a trust fall that came to us through our longtime export partners in Colombia at Osito—a washed Pink Bourbon that rivals the quality of coffees from the landrace's ancestral home, presenting in the cup with notes of passionfruit, nectarine, jasmine and lemon.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"'I know you like Pink Bourbons,' Didier Pajoy messaged me one day, after seeing me post about some of my work in Ethiopia. 'This year,' he said, 'there are coffees in La Plata equal to Ethiopians—from a producer whose name is Abelardo Medina.'\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Before he worked for Osito Colombia as the purchasing and warehouse manager in La Plata, Huila, I knew Didier Pajoy as a coffee producer and technician who helped organize his neighbors in La Plata with another group of producers in La Argentina into an informal cooperative. As the biggest buyer of coffee from that original group and its successor, Grupo Mártir, I became familiar with the way Didier operates and valued him not only for his knowledge and skill as a coffee producer but also for his cupping spoon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Up to this point, the coffees I've purchased for Aviary have come through personal work or direct connection—I've typically visited the farm or mill or had many conversations with the grower or producer of the coffee throughout the harvest and post-harvest process. In this case, I didn't know Abelardo; but if nothing else, buying coffee is a game of chance and a game of trust. We work through trusted agents and build contracts and finance around trust anchors. The leads that come our way for new supply chains and new partners come from referrals through those networks of trust. And I trust Didier: so when he asks me to take notice, I take notice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I contracted the last available lot of Abelardo's coffee from an upcoming ocean shipment of coffee from Colombia through Osito. There was no pre-ship material available, and I wasn't able to sample before contracting. But because I can rely on the networks and systems Osito has built and because I've worked deeply with their team, I had confidence—confidence which was rewarded upon arrival with a \u003cstrong\u003edense, complex coffee with notes of passionfruit, nectarine, jasmine and lemon\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThere is only 22kg available in this drop.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49180151841072,"sku":"009","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/009_-_Abelardo_Medina.png?v=1729714789"},{"product_id":"010-nancy-mendoza","title":"010 – Nancy Mendoza","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eOur initial roast of this coffee was \u003cem\u003eextremely \u003c\/em\u003elight—too light for many preferences, including my own. While the florality was soaring, the cup lacked the bright fruit that I'd found in my initial evaluations. For our freezer sale, we're roasting this on the Roest P3000 and aimed to bring this beautiful Gesha back to its original form: tangy, bright and complex.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first coffee of our 2025 season comes to us from the same cooperative that brought us AVIARY#002. A young third-generation coffee grower in Cajamarca, Peru, Nancy Mendoza. received Gesha seeds from Costa Rica via her friend Wilder Garcia and planted them at her 2 hectare farm in pursuit of better prices for her coffee.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom Christopher: \"Peru, with its soaring elevations and strong cooperative architecture, has quickly established itself as a producer of exceptionally high-quality and sought-after coffees. The adoption of exotic cultivars such as Gesha from collections in Panama and Costa Rica has led to higher prices for many of Peru's smallholders, who grow, on average, on less than 2 hectares of land each.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As I was exploring coffees to feature for 2025 season, I reached out to the supply chain partners we'd worked with in 2024, in the hopes of repeating at least a portion of our purchasing through the same producers. Joel from Yellow Rooster noted that he was importing individual producer separations from the same cooperative led by Maria Nieves, who produced AVIARY#002, Alpes Andinos—including many from women. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eWhile women remain both marginalized and minorities within the global supply chain, research demonstrates that involving women in finances of production leads to greater financial security and producer equity. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"This coffee, exported through Alpes Andinos, comes from Nancy Mendoza—a young, quality-focused producer who grows on 2 hectares in Cajamarca—and presents in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003evibrant florals of jasmine and lavender supported by structured acidity and a fruited character that presents as pineapple, blackberry and mandarin\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49496463376688,"sku":"010-retail","price":39.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/010_tile.png?v=1738283819"},{"product_id":"011-lino-rodriguez","title":"011 - Lino Rodriguez","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eOver my career as a buyer, there are few producers who have consistently produced coffees that end up in my top 10 coffees of the year—Lino is one of them. In nearly a decade of buying his coffees, he's stunned me with his continual exploration of the interplay between process and variety, and this Gesha was no exception. One of my favorite coffees of this season, it's accompanied in this re-release by a small amount of his Aviary drop from last year, AVIARY#004. For this re-release, we attempted to match the style and expression of the original release, which we loved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe second coffee of our 2025 season comes to us from a favorite producer of our 2024 season: Lino Rodriguez. A \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003esix-time Cup of Excellence awarded producer, Lino's reputation for quality is rivaled only by his professionalism and sincerity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom Christopher: \"I've been buying coffee from Lino Rodriguez for almost ten years—since before he won the Cup of Excellence or built the reputation he has today. In the years I've roasted coffee from Lino and his family, I've bought Tabi, Castillo, Caturra, and Pink Bourbon from their farm—but never Gesha. This is notable only because Gesha—which was introduced to Colombia in 2005—was one of the first exotic cultivars Lino planted, as a result of a planting program sponsored by Banexport in 2010.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Through the program, Banexport provided seeds—purportedly from the Esmeralda estate in Panama—with the guarantee of purchasing any of the coffee produced. After a few years, the program ended as the pricing for gesha became uncompetitive. However, the trees remained.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Aviary's first release of 2025 from Nancy Mendoza was a Gesha from the CATIE collection in Costa Rica resulting from the FAO Mission to Ethiopia in 1964; the mythology of the gesha germplasm grown by Lino, sourced from Panama, is that it originated earlier, collected from Ethiopia in the 1930s and then sent to Tanzania and Kenya, from where it made its way to Panama and infamy.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"This coffee, which Lino exported through his cooperative in Palestina and shipped my home via Fedex, presents in the cup with notes of \u003cstrong\u003ejasmine, orange\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eblossom\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003eand pomegranate with a blood orange and brown sugar sweetness.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49549781631280,"sku":"011-retail","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/011tile.png?v=1740016456"},{"product_id":"012-emmanuel-rusatira","title":"012 - Emmanuel Rusatira","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eIf I had to hazard a guess, I'd say this coffee was the sleeper of the season—a stunningly sweet, structured and clean washed Bourbon that captures the beauty of Rwandan coffee. What it lacked in florality or loud fruit tones it made up for in layers of sweetness. I hope that, through this re-release, which is somewhat lighter than the original release, it finds a new and appreciative audience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe third coffee of our 2025 season comes to us through a collaboration with Emmanuel Rusatira of Baho in Rwanda and Sundog Trading. This microlot showcases how intentional processing and drying can produce a clean, articulate coffee that can hold up even to extended transit times.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom Christopher: \"I'm enthusiastic about supporting young importing companies when I can, particularly when they've committed to marketing coffee from a particular producer or supply chain. This interest—coupled with my love for coffee from Rwanda—led me to begin buying from Ben Bowdoin and his company, Sundog Trading, in 2020.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the 1970s and 1980s, coffee played a central role in the economy of Rwanda and provided a living for hundreds of thousands of smallholder coffee farmers and their families. The industry collapsed, however, following the implosion of the International Coffee Agreement, which devastated prices, and the genocide that followed in the aftermath. Following the end of the genocide, coffee production took a central role in the economic and cultural reconstruction of Rwanda.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the genocide's survivors, Emmanuel Rusatira, would go on to first manage washing stations for other exporters and then eventually found his own export company and washing stations—establishing his company with a mission of celebrating his \u003cem\u003ejoie de vivre \u003c\/em\u003eand the perseverance\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eof the Rwandan while promoting meaningful economic opportunity for his community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For Sundog's 2024-2025 import, I collaborated with Ben and Emmanuel, writing a series of processing and drying protocols to explore not only the cup impacts of controlled fermentation but also how slow, shaded drying could improve the durability of the green coffee over long transit times. This proved to be prescient—as transit delays kept the coffee afloat for three months longer than anticipated. Emannuel oversaw the processing himself, isolating cherry from growers at the highest elevations around Muzo hill.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"When this coffee arrived, I was delighted with how well it withstood its long journey, presenting in the cup \u003cstrong\u003ewith sweet notes of cherry cola, caramel and blood orange.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49651703218480,"sku":"012-retail","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/012tile.png?v=1742919310"},{"product_id":"013-demetrio-sanchez-pino","title":"013 - Demetrio Sanchez Pino","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher:\u003c\/em\u003e Looking back at 2025, this is the coffee I'm most grateful to have another opportunity to roast and taste. Comparing my notes between my initial sample roast on the Roest and the later production roasts, it's the coffee with the most divergence in cup. I'm excited for the opportunity to present this stunning award-winning Gesha in a new light.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe fourth coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason continues this year's exploration of non-Panamanian Geshas and comes to us from the Copa de Oro competition hosted by Osito Colombia. Demetrio Sanchez Pino's washed gesha scored second-place in the Western division but was consistently among the highest-scoring coffees each round of the competition. \u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Though I was not able to attend this year's Copa de Oro competition, I asked the team at Osito if they'd be willing to share the cupping and offer sheet from the competition afterward so that I might have the opportunity to purchase any unsold lots. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Following \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/03\/16\/calibration-quality-and-the-myth-of-infallibility\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003emy analysis\u003c\/a\u003e of last year's competition and my experience in Garzón, I knew the type of coffee I was hoping for: one that scored consistently high in each round of the competition and among the top 5 of each individual cupper. Cupping scores are impacted by table placement, but I was curious if this sort of comparative analysis from a large enough data set and based on my own experience could lead me to the coffee I was looking for—without ever dipping a spoon. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The coffee I ended up selecting turned out to be in keeping with the theme I'd established for this season of Aviary—an exploration of geshas grown outside of Panama, where the prices paid, while still higher than traditional varieties, were a far-cry from the prices paid during the Best of Panama auctions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"To be honest: I prefer Demetrio's to those record-setting coffees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As far as producing regions of Huila go, La Plata is the dark horse of the Copa de Oro competition—not as well known for its microclimates as San Agustín, or elevations and varieties as Palestina, or famous producers like Gigante and Cauca—but as Osito's purchasing manager Didier Pajoy has consistently shown me in our nearly decade of work together, its quality potential is staggering.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Demetrio's 5 hectare farm is at soaring elevations in La Plata—2100 to 2200 masl—where he grows Gesha originally brought to Colombia by Banexport from the Esmeralda estate (\u003cem\u003ethe same program from which Lino Rodriguez \/ AVIARY#011 got his gesha\u003c\/em\u003e) as well as Colombia, Caturra, Pink Bourbon and Arushi intercropped with corn, avocado, and arracacha. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Aviary's first release of 2025 from Nancy Mendoza and fourth from Maria Nieves were Geshas from the CATIE collection in Costa Rica resulting from the FAO Mission to Ethiopia in 1964; the mythology of the gesha germplasm grown by Demetrio and Lino Rodiguez, sourced from Panama, is that it originated earlier, collected from Ethiopia in the 1930s and then sent to Tanzania and Kenya, from where it made its way to Panama and infamy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This coffee is juicy, vibrant and complex with notes of just-ripe mango and candy-like sweetness in a cup dominated by \u003cstrong\u003enectarine, jasmine, pineapple, and orange blossom.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49707747410224,"sku":"013-retail","price":44.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/013tile.png?v=1745342893"},{"product_id":"014-maria-nieves","title":"014 - Maria Nieves","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eWe're once again rehydrating this coffee for the freezer sale—using vacuum to better homogenize moisture in the lot ahead of roasting in the hopes of reducing cup variance. As the Roest P3000 uses inlet as its control schema, we will be roasting this one manually to ensure that it roasts evenly—rehydrated coffees tend to require significantly more energy in the middle of the roast to drive off excess moisture. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe fifth coffee of our 2025 season continues this year's exploration of non-Panamanian Geshas and comes to us from the producer of one of Aviary's first releases: Maria Nieves. Like Nancy Mendoza, Maria planted Gesha seeds that came to Peru via\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e Costa Rica in an effort to improve her family's prosperity through the cultivation of high-quality specialty coffee.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"The first year of production of Maria Nieves' Gesha trees resulted in a coffee that was not only the highest-scoring coffee of all coffees I bought in 2023-2024, but also one of my favorite coffees of Aviary's first season. Ahead of the 2025 season, I committed to purchasing Maria's coffee again—my third purchase through Yellow Rooster, and second from Maria Nieves Tantalean Fernandez, whose leadership of Asprocafe \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAlpes Andinos ensures a fair price for the members of the cooperative.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"When we buy coffee year-over-year, we help to mitigate risk for producers and create stability. Though Aviary's purchasing volume was small, the high premium paid to Maria helped to offset a season of overall lower yields.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The chaos of the universe often makes itself part of the profile of the coffees we enjoy, and the story of this coffee is no different. Harvest and export in Peru in 2024 came during a particularly tumultuous period. Lower yields and a rapidly-rising market created not only liquidity challenges but also led to defaults for many cooperatives in the country. These problems delayed exports—as did \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/videos\/cvg6zrvdq7qo\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehuge waves that struck the Peruvian coastline\u003c\/a\u003e during peak export season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"When this coffee did eventually make its way to the Port of New Jersey, three months late, it had been exposed to heat, humidity and long transit times—all of which are detrimental to quality. I'd paid a premium for a coffee that arrived faded. I immediately vacuum-sealed and froze the coffee at -20ºC as a way to protect it from further degradation until it was ready for release.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This situation, I believe, is when roasters show not only their character but their skill. I noted paper flavors in the cup—a hallmark of fade—but rather than rejecting the coffee based on quality, forcing the importer to liquidate at a loss, I used rehydration and roasting techniques that I'd developed to render this coffee as close as possible to its former glory—which had presented with\u003cstrong\u003e notes of bright raspberry, tangerine and jasmine.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49753156944176,"sku":"014-retail","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/014_tile.png?v=1745343531"},{"product_id":"015-layo-teraga","title":"015 - Layo Teraga","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eFor 2025 in Ethiopia, I played favorites: Layo Teraga is my favorite cooperative in all of Ethiopia and every year produces some of my favorite coffees. The profile is one that is somewhat unfamiliar to many consumers relative to those coming from the highlands of Yirgacheffe or Agaro, but it rewards us in the cup with vibrant stonefruits, high acidity, and a rue-like fruity herbaciousness. I adore this coffee—and I'm excited to roast it again. For this re-release, we took the roast slightly lighter to allow the clean florality to punch through.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I16MZhUVEvI?si=mOqeNRJVK17Cmcll\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe sixth coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason takes us to Uraga, Ethiopia, where the Layo Teraga cooperative and its 1814 smallholder members produce stunning traditional washed and natural coffee across three processing stations. This washed coffee comes from a two-week separation from Site 01, the cooperative's highest elevation station, and bursts with complex, fruited acidity.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"It's not difficult for me to pick favorites among Ethiopia's smallholder cooperatives: Layo Teraga stands alone not only for the quality of its coffee, but the professionalism and ambition of its management. The name 'Layo Teraga' comes from the words in the local language meaning 'fertile soil' and 'freedom fighter'—a \u003cspan\u003eportmanteau that appropriately describes the cooperative. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the Ethiopian export system, cooperatives have generally organized under the umbrella of a larger Union for the purposes of marketing and exporting their coffee. This structure provided specialized services for the cooperative, enabling them to focus on the production of coffee, while paying the Union to facilitate all other activities associated with the export. Not all Unions, however, serve their members equally—and additional layers within a transaction not only reduce transparency and efficiency but also introduce the opportunity for skimming, corruption and gamesmanship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But ahead of my first visit to Layo Teraga in 2022 while I was working to source coffee for Crop to Cup Coffee Importers, the cooperative had, with its sister cooperative in Yirgacheffe (Homa) broken away from its Union with the intention of directly exporting its coffee to buyers. By obtaining its own export license, the cooperative no longer relied on the Union to market or negotiate pricing for its coffee—and with the ability to receive USD as payment, could diversify its activities to include importation of products for sale in Ethiopia, improving the financial security of the cooperative—and thus, the prosperity of its members.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The horizontal organization of smallholders into cooperatives or associations is one way that producers can access better-paying specialty markets, manage risk, and negotiate a higher price through collective bargaining. While these structures can take many forms—formal and informal—Ethiopia's cooperatives, particularly in the West, have for decades been a model of how well-run organizations can improve individual producer welfare.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Because of the successes of its export and import activities, Layo Teraga—which operates a processing station in Boye and one in Koche in addition to its highest elevation site in Layo, which was built in 2011 and specializes in washed coffee—was able to not only last year able to pay a dividend payment to its members of 5 birr per kilogram of cherry, but has reinvested its profits in the community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The impact that a cooperative can have relative to an individual smallholder scales with success of each season. For this reason, winning loyalty and year-over-year purchasing from buyers is a priority of the cooperative's young management. The improvements and projects funded by the cooperative include: building the main road from in town (enabling easier delivery and movement of coffee and thus easier payment); an electric power station (to provide electricity for the stations and community), classrooms for children of the members; and a banking system providing advanced payments to members through the harvest for anticipated cherry delivery. As of this year, the cooperative had begun work to provide clean, potable water to the community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"During my visit to Layo in December 2024, we asked for the cooperative to create two-week separations of the harvest in its warehouse to enable us to cup through and select the highest-quality lots for export. This coffee comes from a separation at the early end of the peak harvest and presents in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003evibrant tropical and stonefruit notes of apricot, peach and pineapple highlighted with jasmine and pink lemonade\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I made a short documentary about my sourcing work for Crop to Cup in Ethiopia during the 2024-2025 season including \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/fkl5QVYIAo0?t=119\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ea chapter on Layo Teraga\u003c\/a\u003e. There, you can get a look at the processing station and more background about the cooperative.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49859835953456,"sku":"015-retail","price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/015tile.png?v=1748635206"},{"product_id":"016-kerehaklu","title":"016 - Kerehaklu","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eThis coffee turned out to be the most polarizing release of 2025. For some, it offered a sweetness- and floral-forward optimistic presentation of the potential for Indian Arabica; for others, it fell too outside of the normal Aviary profiles: a bit less fruit-forward, a bit less integrated in the cup. I will take ownership of that: any successes that an individual coffee might have are all owed to the producer; any failures were mine. I'm hoping that in the freezer sale, I do a better job showcasing the brilliant work by Pranoy and Ajoy Thipaiah and execute a roast style that better suits this mosto-inoculated SL9.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5TjRiAf6dVg?si=pE6eKFEl_MwM3l5S\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe seventh coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason comes from Chikmagalur, India, where Ajoy Thipaiah and his son Pranoy produce coffee under dense forest canopy at Kerehaklu estate. This washed Selection 9 microlot was processed using a fermentation inoculated with a mosto cultured from the farm's microflora and presents tropical and tangy with complex acidity and sweetness.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"While perhaps better known for its tea or spices, India's stature as a coffee producing country continues to grow—not for producing Robusta and Monsooned Malabar, but rather high-quality specialty Arabica. About a five hour drive west of Bangalore, toward the Arabian Sea, a group of coffee growers in Chikmagalur produce coffee that has, in recent years, caught the attention of quality-minded roasters in the U.S. and Europe: producers like Kerehaklu, who only began to focus on specialty coffee in 2019.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"After our collaboration for \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/aviary.coffee\/collections\/coffee-archive\/products\/xx2-pranoy-thipaiah\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAVIARY#XX2\u003c\/a\u003e, Pranoy and I were eager to find a new coffee to release under the Aviary moniker, so in February I boarded a plane to visit India for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Kerehaklu doesn't seem like a place where high-quality coffee should grow; sitting at modest elevations of just 1100 meters above sea level at the foothills of the Mullayanagiri range in Southern India, temperatures in Chikmagalur routinely surpass 30ºC—far above the ideal temperatures for growing Arabica. Yet under the forest there, temperatures remain cool and comfortable for both humans and coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Agroforestry and Participatory Forest Management models of production are of particular interest to me (Aviary's earliest releases, from Finca\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/aviary.coffee\/collections\/coffee-archive\/products\/finca-esperanza\"\u003e Esperanza\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/aviary.coffee\/collections\/coffee-archive\/products\/001-fsjm\"\u003eFinca San Jerónimo Miramar\u003c\/a\u003e exemplify this type of cultivation). Aroforestry can not only function to \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/dailycoffeenews.com\/2025\/06\/18\/in-india-coffee-agroforestry-systems-may-also-work-as-seed-nurseries\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003epreserve local biodiversity\u003c\/a\u003e but also \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.baristahustle.com\/sequestering-carbon\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003esequester carbon\u003c\/a\u003e and improve farmer incomes through diversification of products. But directly, as at Kerehaklu, agroforestry can also improve quality—by reducing temperatures, mulching the soil, and protecting from erosion of topsoil during heavy rains (such as during the monsoon season in India).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As Pranoy wrote in \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/?p=1719\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ea guest piece for my blog as a companion to this release\u003c\/a\u003e, the focus at Kerehaklu is on the soil. the Thipaiah family converted the farm to a fully-organic and biological farm two decades ago and as a result, the biodiversity of the farm has grown. To honor and harness their native microflora, Pranoy made the decision to eschew all commercial inoculants for 2025, instead culturing 'mostos' that began with coffee cherry pulp, sugar and botanical materials collected from around the farm such as lime leaf, fig leaf and coffee blossoms. Overtime, these were fed with coffee cherry juice and pulp, creating distinct populations of microorganisms in each that Pranoy used as starters for fermenting coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Among its cultivars of Arabica, Kerehaklu grows Selection 9—a cultivar descended from an Ethiopian variety, Tafarikela (or sometimes Geisha and S.12 Kaffa), crossed with Hibrido de Timor—which was developed in India and has proven to be widely-adaptable with exceptional cup quality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For 2025, I wanted to continue to explore the intersection of plant genetics with human interventions and asked Pranoy to create a lot using SLN 9 for Aviary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"During my visit, we cupped through three tables of samples from Kerehaklu's peak Arabica production, blind—in each set, I selected as my favorite coffees that turned out to be SLN 9 washed coffees processed using a method that Pranoy has been refining for Kerehaklu. One of those coffees, Lot E, became AVIARY#016 and presents in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003etangy, tropical, bright lactic-citric acidity and notes of tamarind, apricot, red apple and orange.\u003c\/strong\u003e\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRead \u003ca rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/?p=1719\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ePranoy's piece about India's coffee production\u003c\/a\u003e, \"\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003eWe’ve been here all along.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49894274367792,"sku":"016-retail","price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/016tile.png?v=1750106948"},{"product_id":"017-tagel-alemayehu","title":"017 - Tagel Alemayehu","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eWithout exception, of the several hundred I cupped, this was my favorite washed coffee to come out of Ethiopia in 2025—enough said. I'm thrilled to roast it again and chose to roast in a slightly lighter style than its original release to allow the expressiveness and complexity of this coffee to shine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qlZfDcuVKfg?si=OaHGoSLtEIe9N8Th\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe eighth coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason takes us to Goro, Hambela, Ethiopia, where Tagel Alemayehu operates a washing station and processes cherry from approximately 130 registered smallholder outgrowers. This washed coffee—two years in the making—comes from a two-week separation from peak harvest and presents in the cup acid-forward with sweet, structured stonefruit notes.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I first visited Tagel Alemayehu's station in Hambela in December 2023. That year, I'd hoped to contract a container of washed coffee from the station for Crop to Cup's 2024 import, but back then, the station wasn't operating; finance issues and a foreign currency shortage made overproduction of coffees—particularly washed coffees, which under Ethiopia's coffee regulations must be exported—risky for exporters like Tagel.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And so the motor sat silent; the grassy hillside, covered during normal seasons with hundreds of raised beds, sat empty. A washing station at 2350 meters at the top of the hillside—chilly and windy even in the dry season—didn't make any coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Private washing stations dot Southern Ethiopia like clover—enterprises designed to produce volumes of coffee efficiently and move it to export, often through vertically-integrated channels—and I don't normally buy from them. From financial transparency and traceability of cherry to the way that outgrowers are paid, the interests and motivations of private washing stations owner rarely align with my own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But in Tagel, I saw not only alignment but a tale that inspired those in the community we spoke with—that redemption, through hard work, can follow misfortune. Tagel grew up in Hambela, the son of a coffee supplier who built the largest milling business in the Blue Hora area. When the coffee market collapsed, his father lost his business to the bank. Tagel worked as an accountant and cherry collector for export companies, learning the business, and built his reputation for precision and savvy while saving the money he earned—enough to buy his father's mill back from the bank.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Eventually, he returned home to Hambela and built this station in Goro, where he hopes to bring his own children up in the coffee business.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"On the road leaving the station during that first visit, we'd seen a farmer bringing cherry up the road on our way in and stopped him to ask who he was selling it to: he beamed, proudly, telling us that he was selling it to Tagel. In a year when competition for cherry meant that ripeness and cherry selection was a challenge across the country, the cherry brought by this farmer gleamed bright-red. While the common practice in private washing stations is to offer a single payment to producers on delivery of cherry, Tagel registers the producers he buys from and provides a second payment at export—like cooperatives do—incentivizing growers to not only sell cherry to him but treat their coffee with the same care in picking that he promised to undertake in processing and marketing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"While we weren't able to buy coffee from Tagel that year, we asked that he'd stay in touch—and to please let us know if he planned to make washed coffee at his station in Hambela.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And he did: We returned to the station a year later, in December 2024—Moata riding shotgun in Tagel's car, Tagel flexing the reflexes he steeled in his youth as a race circuit driver, rocketing at 90kmph up the mountain with U2's \"Songs of Innocence\" clanging through the car's unimaginably bad speakers. When we got to the top of the mountain, the station's motor whirred; the beds were full.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This coffee, a reward after two years of effort, is a small part of a two-week separation representing peak harvest bursting with complexity, stonefruit and acidity presenting in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003esweet notes of just-ripe Alphonso mango, tangerine, peach and pink lemonade.\u003c\/strong\u003e\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":49902237942064,"sku":"017-retail","price":33.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/017tile.png?v=1750287636"},{"product_id":"018-san-jeronimo-miramar","title":"018 - San Jerónimo Miramar","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eIn the initial release of this coffee, I erred on the side of light—resulting in a coffee that needed significant rest but was clean and sugary in the cup. For the freezer release, we're aiming to push development slightly (but not too much!) further, to bring out a slight bit more of the raspberry tone coming from the honey-processed day lot that makes up about 30% of this lot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba7Dy35FTqA?si=UT39YLfEA0mQLUFa\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe ninth coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason takes us to the slopes of Volcán Atitlán where the Bressani family—fourth-generation coffee growers—operate a dairy and coffee farm, San Jerónimo Miramar, using a regenerative, agroforestry model. This gesha—adapted to their farm but originally from the CATIE collection—is an Aviary exclusive blend of three small day lots (two washed and one honey) presenting as a bright cup with notes of jasmine, tangerine, apricot, raspberry and pineapple.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Most of the buying I do for Aviary is from smallholders whose primary source of income is coffee production. Smallholders produce the majority of the world's coffee and are very often not only among the most disadvantaged members of the value stream not only in terms of income and market access but also risk.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eMeanwhile, estates are not only larger in scale but commonly have owners whose privilege and access is greater than those of smallholders. Estates typically employ and house dozens or hundreds of people—entire communities in and of themselves—so while their impact can be greater than those of a smallholder, the burden for acting responsibly and doing less harm is even greater, still.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But for that reason, I've long admired the work that the Bressani family—fourth generation coffee growers—are carrying out at Finca San Jerónimo Miramar. FSJM is a testament to what can be achieved when efforts, values and expertise are carried through generations over a century—and a showcase of how farm management can create resiliency for the future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I first purchased coffee from FSJM for Aviary's first season, in 2024, and made a point of visiting the farm ahead of the 2025 season so see the farm and its industry-leading soil fertility management programs up close. And the truth is that what I saw at FSJM gives me hope: it offers, I think, a tangible demonstration of how a different approach to coffee production—a fully-organic forest system with diversified revenue streams—could offer not only greater resiliency for producers in the face of climate change, but also stability in the face of market volatility.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The focus at FSJM is the soil. I spent most of my visit with Giorgio Bressani, who manages the coffee production at FSJM, talking about nutrient cycling, and how layers of shade canopy create topsoil—improving humidity control, reducing the temperature of surface soil and feeder roots, mulching the trees with organic matter, preventing erosion and leeching of nutrients, and resulting in healthier, more disease- and climate-resistant trees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"All of the efforts at FSJM don't just lead to healthier trees and more fertile soil—they create a microclimate.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eWalking just 10 meters at the edge of the farm to an adjacent property, I felt the texture of the topsoil change. Where on FSJM, topsoil is 3cm or more, here it was just a millimeter. the topsoil at FSJM below the surface is \"cool enough to drink a beer\" (all credit to Giorgio for that phrase) but at the adjacent farm, it's hot to the touch. The stress on the trees showed—with lower productivity and density in the nodes, less glossy leaves, higher defoliation, and a warmer ambient temperature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Economic resiliency and diversification is also at the heart of the system here. Coffee is just one revenue stream—also planted here are valuable cash crops like cacao, cardamom, fruits as well as hardwoods—with the the dairy operated by the family, first established by Giorgio's grandfather in the 1950s, providing true economic security. Even in difficult years for the coffee market, the farm is able to sustain not only the Bressani family but the hundreds of families who rely on the farm's operations for a living.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The scale of effort at FSJM is matched only by the ambition of the team—which includes not only Giorgio and his siblings but 350 highly trained and precisely deployed pickers and a professional staff of experts who oversee everything from the nursery and breeding operation to composting to the pasturing of cows and pruning and maintenance of trees to replication of mycelium and wasps to combat broca—not to mention processing, drying, milling, and export, nor the dairy factory nor hydroelectric plant that generates the power for the farm, dairy, mill and town.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The impressive infrastructure of FSJM is the work of literal generations—beginning with Giorgio's great-grandfather, Cesare, who started the family in coffee; expanded by his grandfather, Valentin, who built much of the infrastructure; re-invented by his father, Mark, the \"Cheese Man\" who laid the foundations for innovations in quality with a natural vision; and lived today by Giorgio and his siblings who brought the farm into the 21st century both in terms of farm practices and market access.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e\"\u003c\/span\u003eWhile some projects in coffee are either focused on cloning, pure genetics and certified seed, FSJM employs dynamic genetic management at its nursery and in the fields, actively selecting and breeding the best performing trees based on their characteristics (disease resistance, yield, cup performance) and those seemingly best adapted to the farm. This means intentionally allowing adaptation and evolution to happen—encouraging resiliency while selecting for desirable traits while reducing genetic bottlenecks. For this reason, FSJM has unique cultivars in its collection that outperform their traditional counterparts both on the table and in the field.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e\"The Gesha planted on the farm originally came from the CATIE institute collection in Costa Rica, a descendant of the 1964 FAO mission to Ethiopia—but through farm management practices, is uniquely adapted to the microclimate and conditions at FSJM, rendering a somewhat different cup outcome and performance in the field.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This coffee is a blend of three small day lots—two washed, and one honey process—that I selected after cupping through every separation of Gesha produced by the team at FSJM during the 2024 harvest. In the cup, this coffee presents \u003cstrong\u003ebright and vibrant with notes of tangerine, apricot, raspberry, jasmine and pineapple.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50027313168688,"sku":"018-retail","price":39.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/018tile.png?v=1754337914"},{"product_id":"019-angel-arturo-paz","title":"019 - Ángel Arturo Paz","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eI greedily chugged my reserve box of this coffee from its initial release—my favorite of the 2025 season—and missed out on its full evolution as the coffee rested and ripened. I won't make that mistake again—which means that I'll be keeping additional boxes of this one for myself. It's a treat to be able to re-release and enjoy this one again. For this re-release, we attempted to match the style and expression of the original release, which we loved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe tenth coffee of our 2025 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ecomes from Cup of Excellence winner Ángel Arturo Paz, a third-generation coffee producer whose farm, El Itacayo, sits on the border of a wildlife preserve. This gesha lot—from seed sprouted from Hacienda La Esmeralda—is an Aviary exclusive and one of the first lots Arturo dried using his new drying room, presenting as a bright, juicy, structured cup with notes of orange blossom, citron, yuzu, Calamansi orange, mango, green melon, apricot and lemongrass.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I first got to know Arturo Paz through his coffee, which I cupped blind on a table showcasing the 2021 Cup of Excellence winners from Honduras. His selection—a gesha from El Itacayo—placed eighth, but was my favorite of that year's top 20. I don't typically participate in COE auctions, though, and didn't have another way to buy his coffee. Because of the stature of his perhaps better-known and more outwardly jubilant cousin and Cup of Excellence legend, Benjamin, there's no shortage of demand for Arturo's coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Most of the time, there's an extreme power imbalance in the relationship between buyer and seller—even in scenarios of direct trade. While roasters may have specific interest in a coffee or producer, they have virtually unlimited other options should a coffee not meet their price, quality or availability expectations. Sellers, on the other hand, typically have limited market access or export sales channels that might create competition for their coffees and put them in a stronger posture for negotiation. But because of their reputation for quality, skill as producers and businesspeople, kindness and integrity, Arturo and Benjamin have fostered a loyal network of buyers who purchase 100% of their coffee year over year, positioning themselves to not only command the price they receive for their coffee but also decide which buyers and which companies they'd like to sell to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It's this upending and inversion of traditional coffee supply chain dynamics—resulting from a producer's investment in and commitment to quality—that fascinated me, even though I knew it would be unlikely that I could ever buy coffee from Arturo or Benjamin as it was already pre-contracted, in full, forever by existing clients.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A third-generation coffee producer, Arturo and his family own and operate a dry mill and export company in Santa Barbara. In 2012, Arturo and Benjamin began planting their own plots of coffee—Arturo on the border of a wildlife preserve at elevations up to 1700 masl, creating a buffer zone protecting the wildlife and ecosystem of the rainforest and creating a wet, cool microclimate ideal for production of high-quality coffee—using Gesha seeds obtained from Hacienda la Esmeralda in Panama (originally collected from Ethiopia in the 1930s and then sent to Tanzania and Kenya, from where it made its way to Panama and infamy).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Nearly four years after tasting his coffee for the first time, in April 2025, I met Arturo in person after an introduction at SCA Expo in Houston by my friend and colleague Kylee Clancy of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.vervecoffee.com\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eVerve Coffee\u003c\/a\u003e—longtime buyers of coffee from both Arturo and Benjamin. By then, Arturo had had collected multiple more Cup of Excellence wins (#27 in 2023, #7 in 2024, #9 in 2025) and his coffee had found its way onto the menus of some of the most-acclaimed roasteries in the U.S. After a brief conversation—where we shyly traded photos of drying rooms (Arturo had just completed building his) and ideas about how to optimize their use—Arturo suggested that he might have coffee for me to taste.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This lot is the result of that conversation and the final of Aviary's 2025 exploration into the genetics of Gesha and Ethiopian lineage coffees—and the second lot ever dried in Arturo's dark-room. I am honored to have the opportunity to present this intensely sweet coffee that is layered with juicy notes of \u003cstrong\u003emango, red currant, citron, Calamansi orange, lime and yuzu that modulates to green melon and apricot sweetness and citrus as it cools\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50082735292720,"sku":"019-retail","price":44.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/019_tile.png?v=1756497689"},{"product_id":"020-yusuf-al-aalam","title":"020 - Yusuf Al Aamal","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eI received countless messages asking if there was any of this coffee available \u003cem\u003esomewhere, somehow!\u003c\/em\u003e I was happy with the profile I'd set for the production roast and so, yes, there was some set aside for the freezer sale—which we're making available now. We'll aim for the same balance of punchy-fruit and sugary sweetness but will endeavor to push acidity slightly higher for this re-release.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe eleventh coffee of our 2025 season \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ecomes through a collaboration between Aviary, Mokha King and Yusuf Al Aamal that almost never happened—a honey process Yemenia designed to push the bounds of risk and possibility and examine the nuance and geopolitical realities behind the international coffee trade—presenting in the cup with intense sweetness and notes of raisin, fig, date, white raspberry, violet, mulberry and red apple.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Outside of Ethiopia, nowhere has a stronger claim to being the birthplace of Arabica as we know it today than Yemen. For nearly 200 years, beginning in the 15th century, Yemen was the world's sole commercial producer—changing only when, \u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2025\/07\/08\/weve-been-here-all-along-pranoy-thipaiah\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003elegend has it\u003c\/a\u003e, seeds were smuggled by an Indian pilgrim named Baba Budan who planted it in Chikmagulur, India (origin of AVIARY#016). Geographically isolated and with a climate distinct from the montane forests of Ethiopia, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-024-64074-9\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003egenetics in Yemen drifted over its centuries of cultivation there\u003c\/a\u003e, becoming more tolerant of the dry, hot conditions and developing deeper roots to tap water from the aquifers in the terraced farms on the face of the \u003cspan\u003eJabal \u003c\/span\u003eḤarāz mountains\u003cspan\u003e.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/340012724_Authentication_of_Coffea_arabica_Varieties_through_DNA_Fingerprinting_and_its_Significance_for_the_Coffee_Sector\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDescendants of these accessions—Bourbon and Typica\u003c\/a\u003e—made their way to the Western Hemisphere.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"That is to say: while Arabica may have originated in Ethiopia, coffee from the Americas that came to dominate global trade is more closely related to those coffees from Yemen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Traditionally, coffees in Yemen are grown on the terraced mountainside by smallholders who dried the cherry as naturals, sometimes conditioning it in caves. The intensely winey, musky, complex profile that often results is one that I struggle with—and I've long wondered how \u003cem\u003eYemenia\u003c\/em\u003e coffees would taste if we were able to process them in a way such that we could present these ancient varieties in cups less influenced by process.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And so, in July 2023, I reached out to Hudaifa Tayeb of Mokha King. I knew that Mokha King had worked with \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.hatchcrafted.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHatch Coffee\u003c\/a\u003e to produce an anaerobic natural and asked Hudaifa if he'd be open to trying something I'd never heard of in Yemen before: a wet process. He was keen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Hudaifa's deep roots in Yemen would be integral to executing a novel process in a place I had never been. Hudaifa grew up in Yemen but fled with his family in the early years of the country's civil war—taking the last flight out of the country before flights were suspended during the incursion of the Houthis into Sanaa—spending months drifting in a Homerian journey between Addis Ababa, Djibouti and Dubai before being granted a refugee visa in Canada. There, he established Mokha King with his brother Hassan, who was still living in Yemen, as a way to bring economic opportunity to their family and community in Yemen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"To produce the lot for Aviary, Hudaifa and Hassan partnered with a fourth-generation coffee producer, Yusuf Al-Aamal. Hassan met Yusuf in 2015 after learning the history of Yusuf's family farm, which dates back to the beginning of Yemeni coffee cultivation more than 500 years ago. Born in Sharqi Haraz, Yusuf moved to Sanaa in pursuit of work after graduating high school in Manakha. The economic challenges posed by the war brought him back to Sharqi Haraz, where he planted and produced coffee on his family's farm, and, in 2019 sold his first crop to Mokha King.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Though Sharqi Haraaz does not face the water shortages that threaten other parts of the country, I developed a honey process protocol to minimize water usage in an effort to produce a robust protocol that could be broadly useful. The coffee would be floated, pulped using a hand-pulper and fermented in mucilage before drying under shade on raised beds, without washing. I contracted 60kg in August 2023 in the hopes of releasing it for Aviary's first season in 2024.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As I would not be traveling to Yemen myself to oversee this work, I relied solely on intermediaries—most of whom I'd never met—and needed to be willing to accept the risks of not only a producer executing a process for the first time, but also the risks and logistical challenges presented by exporting from Yemen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Governance in Yemen is fragmented: since its civil war, the Houthis control Sanaa and much of the north of the country, while the \u003cspan\u003einternationally-recognized government controls parts of the South and East from its capital in Aden (and from abroad, with its leaders scattered) with influence from The Southern Transitional Council in the South and Aden. \u003c\/span\u003eThe area of Yemen where much of Yemen's coffee grows—including Yusuf's—remains under the control of the Houthi regime while the port of export in the South is under the control of the internationally-recognized government.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Houthis, formally named Ansar Allah, positioned themselves during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising using Zaydi Shia Islamist, nationalist-populist rhetoric opposing political corruption, economic neglect, and elite dominance—rhetoric which helped the movement gain strength sufficient to later take control over Sanaa. The Houthis' use of sexual violence, oppression of women, violence against journalists, landmines and child soldiers have been widely documented and internationally condemned; isolated and under sanctions, the group relies primarily on financial support from Iran to fund its activities. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Ceasefires brokered between the warring factions by the UN in 2022 offered some relief to Houthi territories and enabled commercial flights to resume in Sanaa, but without foreign aid, access to ports of export and without access to the revenues generated by oil reserves controlled by the internationally-recognized government in the South, public sector workers in Houthi-controlled territories have for years gone unpaid; public infrastructure like electrical services have failed; the healthcare system has collapsed; poverty and food insecurity have risen with the broader economic failure. This has left the Houthis deeply unpopular: while difficult to generalize broadly (and difficult to conduct in Yemen), \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sanaacenter.org\/the-yemen-review\/july-sept-2024\/23516\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003epolling shows as little as 8% support\u003c\/a\u003e for the Houthis among people living in the areas they govern.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The Israeli government's response to the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas—a response which has been \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/world\/leading-genocide-scholars-organization-says-israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003edeemed a genocide by scholars\u003c\/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/07\/17\/nx-s1-5468953\/historian-omer-bartov-on-why-he-believes-israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehistorians\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/hrbodies\/hrcouncil\/sessions-regular\/session60\/advance-version\/a-hrc-60-crp-3.pdf\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe \u003c\/a\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/sites\/default\/files\/documents\/hrbodies\/hrcouncil\/sessions-regular\/session60\/advance-version\/a-hrc-60-crp-3.pdf\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eUN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e—presented an opportunity for the Houthis in the face of flagging domestic support and an emerging political crisis.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In late 2023, the Houthis began carrying out drone and missile attacks on ships on the Red Sea—ostensibly in support of Palestine, stating that the attacks \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2023\/12\/19\/yemens-houthis-will-not-stop-red-sea-attacks-until-israel-stops-gaza-war#:~:text=Israel%2DPalestine%20conflict-,Yemen's%20Houthis%20'will%20not%20stop'%20Red%20Sea%20attacks%20until%20Israel,post%20on%20X%20on%20Tuesday.\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewould continue\u003c\/a\u003e until 'crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population.' In its statements, Ansar Allah drew on historical support of Palestine within Yemen that \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.merip.org\/2024\/01\/the-houthis-sovereign-solidarity-with-palestine\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003epredates the creation of the state of Israel\u003c\/a\u003e and positioned itself as the leader of the so-called Axis of Resistance, aiming to \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/yemen-houthis-government-red-sea-1.7101447\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ebolster both support in Yemen\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/carnegieendowment.org\/research\/2025\/02\/leverage-beyond-yemen-ansar-allah-and-its-iraqi-alliances?lang=en\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003esupport from regional governments.\u003c\/a\u003e The attacks, which the \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.mei.edu\/publications\/houthis-see-domestic-and-regional-benefit-continued-red-sea-attacks\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eHouthis initially claimed were meant to target Israel,\u003c\/a\u003e disrupted global shipping—as well as oil exports from the internationally-recognized government.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In a \u003cem\u003ecosmically irrelevant\u003c\/em\u003e footnote and consequence of the Houthi resistance, the initial lot produced by Mokha King for Aviary's first season—shipped in January 2024—was caught in the crossfire. Damaged on the Red Sea, it never arrived.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Hudaifa was distraught as he told me the news, fearful of how I'd react. But I understood the risks of what we'd hoped to achieve and the difficulty of this work and asked him if he'd be willing to try again; I told him I'd find a way to pre-pay for the lot upfront—some $20 per pound—as a way to mitigate his risk of loss. That conversation and the lot that resulted from it was the inspiration for the creation of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/aviary.coffee\/products\/complete-2026-season\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eAviary's full-season reservation model\u003c\/a\u003e, which enables me to not only take risks that live outside the bounds of possibility for most coffee roasting companies, but also live up to my obligations as a buyer by sharing risk if and when I can.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Our second attempt was processed by Hassan Tayeb in December 2024 and January 2025 using cherry from Yusuf Al-Aamal. This time—after countless payments at border crossings and eight months in transit—it made it to the U.S.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This is the magic of coffee; in the cup, we taste something from another world. Its complexity serves as a metaphor for the complexity of the context in which it was created: a place that I've never visited—and where most people won't have the opportunity to go—and where I'm certain the producers, agents, intermediaries, truckers and exporters involved in its production risked and committed more than I can possibly imagine to make this coffee possible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"On August 29, over two years after our first conversation about the project—with the genocide of Palestinians still ongoing, and with ships on the Red Sea still under Houthi attack—I tasted the resulting coffee for the first time: \u003cstrong\u003ea honey processed Yemeni Jaadi that presents with Liberica-like sweetness, complex, winey acidity and notes of white raspberry, fig, date and mulberry.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe modern history of Yemen and the politics of the Middle East is exceedingly complex—far more complex than I can sufficiently do justice in telling the story of a coffee. To learn more, I highly recommend the \u003ca rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/podcasts\/510333\/throughline\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eThroughline\u003c\/a\u003e podcast from NPR.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50109447700784,"sku":"020-retail","price":60.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/020_tile_29cf3e4f-8936-48e8-a88a-c5486a79fa42.png?v=1763064384"},{"product_id":"021-renato-martinez","title":"021 - Renato Martinez","description":"\u003ch3\u003e2025 FREEZER SALE UPDATE (2025-12-17):\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003eThis is the only coffee that shares the exact same profile as its original release—having been roasted on the same day and using the same machine. Blue fruit shifts to red hibiscus as it rests with citrus acidity, dense structure, velvety body and caramel sweetness—this is everything I want in a washed Typica from anywhere in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe twelfth and final coffee of our 2025 season \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ecomes from a single producer in Mazeteca in Oaxaca, Mexico—a washed process  presenting in a bright, fruited cup with notes of pomegranate, hibiscus, lime and melon. \u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Specialty coffee's fascination with transparency information is one that, I believe, arises from noble intentions. By identifying a producer—by name and by face—and telling their history with a record of the price they were paid for their coffee, we seem to believe we're closing the distance that coffee travels through complex supply chains across the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile transparency \u003cem\u003ecan\u003c\/em\u003e serve as a tool to mitigate concerns of financial exploitation by showing that a 'fair price' was paid, the way we report it may lack sufficient context by which a consumer could make a determination around fairness or equity. Further, while bridging the gap between consumers and producers can help producers access a broader, more specific, more competitive market and thus receive a better price, it's also possible to levy criticisms against this practice—particularly if it relies on tokenization of a producer's image to sell coffee or imply a closeness or relationship that doesn't genuinely exist. That is to say: good intentions don't protect against all possible scenarios or contexts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In some situations, using imagery or details about a producer to market a coffee—with sufficient specificity to identify them locally—can create risks to their security and safety, particularly when the price paid for a coffee is dramatically out of step with the local price in places with limited government participation in daily life. In these contexts, we explore the tension between consumers’ and roasters’ desire for transparency and the practical realities of working in and buying from conflict zones—places torn apart by war, politics and history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"There, to hold the fabric of communities intact, sometimes we must not stand apart, but stand together.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Sierra Mazateca in Mexico is one such context that \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/11\/24\/agents-middlemen-and-how-the-work-is-actually-done\/\" target=\"_blank\"\u003erequires careful consideration\u003c\/a\u003e as well as an understanding of the problematic history of encounters between indigenous communities and outsiders, security threats from narcotraffickers and federales, and the social risks posed by operating outside the local norms. After the collapse of the \u003cem\u003eejido \u003c\/em\u003esystem of land use under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's neoliberal 'reforms,' many indigenous communities moved into the highlands—intentionally far from the reach of government, and in lands too inaccessible for exploitation by the government or corporations. Most of the communities don't speak Spanish—instead speaking Nahuatl or Mixtec or Zapotec or Maya or Mazatec—and the difficulty of navigating the terrain compounded their isolation, making accessing or aggregating coffee as difficult as the importance of those communities maintaining internal social cohesion and preserving their cultural identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"After the ICA collapsed, so too did prices for coffee—which by 1983 accounted for 35% of Mexico's agricultural exports. The Coordination of Coffee Grower Organizations estimates that as a result of the ensuing coffee crisis, Mexican coffee growers would have lost 65% of their potential revenues since the start of the crisis. As a result, 71% of coffee growers stopped using fertilizers, 40% reduced pruning, and 75% stopped investing in control of pests, leading to lower qualities, yields and resiliency ahead of the coffee leaf rust outbreak in Latin America in 2012.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In response, many of the coffee growers in Mexico—who today number more than 500,000, 85% of whom are indigenous and with 95% growing coffee on fewer than 3 hectares of land—organized into informal cooperatives or otherwise collaborated to mitigate their risk and attempt to access the best price for their coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Buying coffees like this one in the way it was purchased—outside of those cooperative structures and bypassing local coyotes who have operated as virtual monopolies and suppressed prices and capturing any premiums paid themselves—is difficult, requiring the building of trust over years and a delicate hand. If the price paid were to be discovered locally it could incite jealousy, theft or, in some cases, violence—or merely break trust and the social contract in the community, eroding longstanding social bonds as well as access to market for those communities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And so we present this coffee under an assumed name—and without a portrait. It's not merely an act of respect—it's in keeping with the spirit of the agreement we've made with the third-party agent whose relationships we rely on to access coffees in these communities and whose staff on the ground must maintain their own networks of trust. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the end, we have a coffee that is able to speak for itself: an old rootstock Typica processed in a traditional manner that presents in the cup with fruited notes of \u003cstrong\u003edried raspberry, pomegranate, hibiscus, lime and bright orange acidity.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50249851896112,"sku":"021-retail","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/021tile.png?v=1762807030"},{"product_id":"022-sergio-caro","title":"022 - Sergio Caro","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe anticipate that t\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehis coffee will be roasted for 2026 season subscribers the weeks of January 5 and January 12, 2026.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HwVmohgum5E?si=myLJqiSNdPYUZDv8\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eWe open our 2026 season with an Aviary exclusive \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003efrom a young, award-winning producer in Caicedo, Antioquia—a multi-stage, extended fermentation washed Chiroso that bursts with juicy, jammy, vibrant notes of mango, pink peppercorn, raspberry, tangerine and pineapple. \u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Hiding in plain sight and a not-quite-four hour drive from Medellín grows some of the best coffee in the world near a town called Urrao. Over a decade ago, Carmen Montoya's win at Cup of Excellence appeared poised to catapult the cultivar she grew—Chiroso—to the stature of Gesha, or later, Pink Bourbon. Later discovered to be an Ethiopian landrace (like both Gesha and Pink Bourbon), Chiroso never found much adoption outside of Urrao—perhaps owing to confusion surrounding its name, which seems to refer to two different trees attached to a traditional variety as a prefix (\"Caturra Chiroso\" or \"Bourbon Chiroso\") or perhaps because of the seemingly unpredictable nature of its cups.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The best Chirosos, though, rivaled the best Ethiopians I've ever had—and all had come from Urrao, from producers like Carmen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"On the road from Medellín, about two-thirds of the way to Urrao, sits a town called Caicedo. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the town was among the most dangerous in Medellín as paramilitary groups like the AUC and rebels vied with each other and the government for control, leading to massacres, kidnappings and intimidation. To fund their activities, the militants exploited coffee farmers, nearly all of whom grew coffee on small plots of land that averaged just 2.5 hectares on the steep cayonside along the Cauca River. A grassroots local non-violent movement that emerged following the kidnapping of Governor Guillermo Gaviria during the March of Peace from Medellín to Caicedo in 2002 coupled with the consolidation and demobilization of the AUC and FARC weakened the hold of the militants on the town—leading to a watershed 2007 vote in which a popular referendum ratified the town as the first non-violent municipality in Colombia.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Many people left Caicedo in the interim to escape the threat of violence and in pursuit of greater economic opportunity in the city. Those who remained and continued to grow coffee were able, as a result of the peace, to be reached by specialty buyers; the rust epidemic of 2010 drove market prices higher and led to greater prosperity for the town. The climate, elevations and growth of traditional cultivars advantaged Caicedo in a new era for Colombian coffee anchored in specialty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Sergio Caro, now 28, was the only one of his six siblings to stay in Caicedo. While the rest left for the city, Sergio stayed to work his grandmother's farm. He went on to earn a technical degree in Agricultural Management and manage quality for Cooperativa de Caficultores de Salgar, learned about green grading, joined the PEC training program through FNC and learned to cup. In 2019, he planted his own small plot of land on his family's farm—just 3,500 trees—with seeds originally from Carmen Montoya in Urrao.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"His small farm's soaring elevations of 2,400 meters make it ideal for the production of an Ethiopian landrace like Chiroso; cold temperatures enable extended fermentations and multi-stage processing without risking defects. Sergio's cupping skill enabled him to rapidly iterate his processing to get the most from the coffee he grew.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Over the past year or eighteen months, I've collaborated with my friends at Unblended in Medellín in support of their inspiring work with young producers in Antioquia—producers like Sergio, who receives a fixed price for his Chiroso that is 50% higher than the FNC's pricing even during a record-high market year. Together, we've developed processes and protocols for ensuring sample integrity, calibrated around quality control parameters, and designed processing and drying experiments to help producers in their network improve quality, differentiate their coffees, or in some cases, reduce defects. But aside from AVIARY#06, I'd never purchased a coffee through the network of producers they work with.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"When I tasted Sergio's coffee—which appeared in a packet of samples delivered to me for feedback in the summer of 2025—I knew it would be the second.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A 320-kilo lot from that year's 1,000 total kilos of production would go on to become a winner in the Tierra de Diversidad competition, netting him $27 per pound. This lot—an Aviary exclusive—was processed using the exact same protocol from peak harvest and presents in \u003cstrong\u003ea complex, bright, vibrant cup with jammy notes of mango, pink peppercorn, raspberry, pineapple and tangerine.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50359957127472,"sku":"022-retail","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/022_tile.png?v=1764019575"},{"product_id":"023-shibru-dube","title":"023 - Shibru Dube","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe anticipate that t\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ehis coffee will be roasted for 2026 season subscribers the weeks of February 2 and February 9, 2026; public sale will follow.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe second coffee of our 2026 season \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eis an Aviary-exclusive lot from a single producer in Gedeb, Yirgacheffe—his first-ever attempt at a wet-process coffee presenting in a floral, fruity cup with notes of jasmine, rose, cherry, lime zest, Valencia orange and peach.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I visited Shibru Dube for the first time in December 2023 as part of my \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fkl5QVYIAo0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003esourcing work for Crop to Cup Coffee Importers\u003c\/a\u003e. Much of my work was focused on opening markets for smallholder-exporters such as Shibru, who had obtained his export license in 2018 but had never successfully sold his coffee directly to a roaster or importer.\u003cem\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"While many—if not most—of the most renowned coffees to come out of Ethiopias in recent years were grown in the newer-planted highlands around Bensa, I have long loved the cup profiles of coffees coming out of Yirgacheffe and saw high quality potential as we walked Shibru's small farm in the kebele of Chelchele.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Eight years after export liberalization, it's still rare to find single-producer, smallholder wet processed coffees from Southern Ethiopia. Large-scale, privately-owned washing stations dot Sidama, Guji and Yirgacheffe and process lots using cherry collected from hundreds or thousands of farmers each; without access to smaller-scale mills, smallholder-exporters nearly exclusively produce cherry-dried naturals. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"By exporting directly rather than selling their coffee as cherry, producers stand to gain greater value for their harvest and increase their financial security. In the past, Shibru had sold his cherry to local suppliers, receiving market pricing. His first attempt to export directly was derailed by a motorcycle accident en route to Dilla that broke both of his legs and led to Kefyalew stepping in to help his father. It was through Kefyalew—who works as a civics teacher in Addis and who had helped Moata's company, CoQua, with social media—that we met Shibru.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The elevation of Shibru's farm, 2100 meters, is high for the area; the hike through his tall Kurume and Dega plantings overshadowed by hundred-year-old hardwood trees left me short of breath. Unlike other prize-winning parts of the South like Bensa, his farm was densely forested with a thick layer of topsoil. As we walked, Kefyalew noted that the Gedeo people regard the forest with a spiritual reverence; to his family, agriculture was a way to honor that gift and the ancient trees must be preserved to ensure their family's continued prosperity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As a result of his first direct export following our visit in 2023, Shibru was able to expand the size of his drying area and his son, Kefyalew, was able to attend training to become certified as an agent, cupper and quality specialist. For our second year, we provided a disc pulper manufactured by GEM (the same model used by Basha Bekele for AVIARY#008, Mate Matiwos for AVIARY#007 and Bekele Belaychow for AVIARY#005) to explore how Shibru might be able to offer an alternative to large washing stations for wet processed coffees from Gedeb. This pulper was funded, in part, through direct contributions by Aviary toward the project—in addition to a pre-harvest commitment to purchase.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The harvest was nearly complete when I returned to Shibru's family farm in December 2024; he had not yet begun processing using the pulper. With the assurances that I would purchase the coffee, he and Kefyalew produced a small lot of 180kg using fruit from some of the highest-elevations on their farm, which grows Dega and Kurume varieties.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The infrastructure of Ethiopia from washing stations to dry mills to finance is built to support the common practice of aggregating coffee from hundreds of thousands of smallholders—not producing micro-lots from single smallholders. This creates challenges and delays; in order to move the coffee to Addis for milling, Shibru had to wait for approval for the contracts from other neighboring producers, whose harvest may have run longer. And once in Addis, scheduled milling times may not have been kept as microlots are deprioritized for larger-scale lots. Once milled, there may be delays at the port as a result of a high volume of exports and the complexity of shipping under multiple exporter numbers in a single consolidated container. Consequently, the arrival timing of this lot was significantly delayed; it did not land in the U.S. until late October of 2025, nearly 10 months after harvest. As a result, this lot did show a small amount of fade in the cup—but we are committed to this project and our relationship with Shibru and accepted the lot regardless, endeavoring to highlight its best qualities and minimize any apparent age through our roasting approach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And, indeed, it had a lot of good to show: \u003cstrong\u003efloral, bright notes of jasmine, lavender, rose, cherry, sweet orange, grapefruit and lime zest.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50359957389616,"sku":"023-retail","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/023_tile.png?v=1766343703"},{"product_id":"xx3-bekele-yutute","title":"XX3 - Bekele Yutute","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"caret-color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003eThis experimental release was made available to 2026 Season Reservation holders and entirely pre-sold. There will be no public drop.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe third coffee in our wildcard series \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ecomes from a Cup of Excellence winning producer in Bensa, Ethiopia processed in an unusual way—fermented in a bag suspended in the cold waters of the river  for three days before being dried under shade—presenting clean and complex in the cup with vibrant fruited notes of blue raspberry, melon, cherry and mild oregano.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"I met Bekele Yutute in February 2019 and, in the three years I bought his coffee on behalf of Crop to Cup Coffee Importers, visited his drying stations across Bensa from Kokose to Bombe to Murago.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Bekele is part of the band of coffee producers that we endearingly referring to as the 'Bensa Boys'—a supergroup of coffee producers and friends who collect Cup of Excellence awards the way some people collect bad habits—and in 2021, Bekele won 5th Place in the Ethiopian Cup of Excellence using a coffee processed at his Kokose drying station just two years after he began producing coffee there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"With an eye on the markets in Asia and the Middle East—where buyers were rumored to pay two or three times what U.S. buyers were willing to pay—his processing methods took an aesthetic leap ahead of my visit in December 2024. The relatively conservative and low-risk anaerobic styles and shade drying we’d worked on together in previous years, perfectly tailored to the U.S. market, were replaced by long, hot fermentations that produced winey and explosive cup profiles that Bekele knew would be favored by his potential buyers in Korea and Dubai. Visiting a friend’s drying station, he saw something he wanted to try: a bag of cherry held in two layers of Grainpro, suspended in the river, where it fermented for 6 days.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"During my visit that year, I saw various mechanisms for achieving this protocol—from piling GrainPro bags filled with cherry against makeshift dams, to 'shark cages' fabricated from steel to be suspended in the river, to more simple rope-and-bag methods, like the one Bekele saw. He knew that the coffee had been contracted by a buyer in the Middle East—exactly the sort of higher-paying customer he hoped to produce coffee for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In this style of processing, water acts to moderate temperatures and slow fermentation—and undesirable rot—resulting a densely fruited, bright cup that often tastes cleaner than anaerobic fermentation performed in barrels and hotter temperatures. But it can also introduce risk: floating unsupervised in the river, the coffee could be stolen or become untethered and spill into the river; it could become contamined by waste in the water source, as rivers in Southern Ethiopia are used for bathing and cleaning as well as to carry away waste; or the fermentation could simply go awry, resulting in a defective cup. This type of experimentation requires access to a clean water source, security, the luxury of time, and either the ability to accept this risk or a buyer willing to share it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For his own experiment, Bekele suspended coffee from his highest-elevation station in Bensa, in Murago, in the river for just three days—producing just 60kg of a less-funky but still explosively fruit-forward, bright coffee.  Initially contracted on behalf of another roaster at a price of $17 per pound FOB, that first contract fell through as a result of the cost of tariffs, the difficulty of logistics and milling delays—all consequences of the difficulty of handling such a small microlot in a country whose infrastructure is set up to handle lots that range from 30 to 320 bags.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Aviary was more than happy to accept the lot in their stead as part of our wildcard series and contracted it speculatively ahead of arrival. \u003cstrong\u003eThe result is an amped-up cup that is winey yet clean and complex with vibrant fruited notes of blue raspberry, melon, cherry, hibiscus, an herbality that is like a mixture of rue and oregano, and a candy-like finish\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50361648218416,"sku":"xx3-retail","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/xx3tile.png?v=1768927757"},{"product_id":"024-luis-edgar-camacho","title":"024 - Luis Edgar Camacho","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cspan style=\"caret-color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003eThis release was exclusively for 2026 Season Reservation holders. There will be no public drop.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe third coffee of our 2026 season comes to us through the Copa de Oro competition from a long-lost connection—an extended, multi-stage fermentation Pink Bourbon that presents tropical, juicy and bright with notes of black tea, mandarin orange, tamarind, pineapple and red currant.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Toward the end of last year, using funds from our full season reservations, Aviary sponsored the Copa de Oro competition organized by Osito in Colombia, through which we'd previously purchased coffee for AVIARY#003 and AVIARY#013.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The annual competition gives producers the opportunity to compete for cash prizes as well as the attention of price-insensitive and quality-oriented buyers. Among the lots submitted was one that did not go on to win but consistently scored 87+ across all rounds from a producer whose name I knew well but whom I’d lost touch with some years before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In 2018, I flew to Colombia to replicate a processing experiment I’d first done the year prior with Lino Rodriguez. My in-country agent matched me with a young, promising producer in Palestina named Luis Edgar Camacho who was well-known for his agronomy practices and farm management and who was just beginning to explore how he might be able to employ processing to further elevate his cup quality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The farm, La Palma was initially purchased and planted by Luis Edgar's father, but after his passing, care of the land passed to his wife and Luis Edgar. Back then, La Palma grew primarily Castillo and Caturra. By improving the hygiene at his beneficio, extending his fermentation times and reducing the temperatures in his marquee drier, we were able to improve the cup quality of his Castillo from 84 to 87 points. I was encouraged and excited by the results and hoped to continue to buy from him in the future; but then, between my changing relationship with his then-exclusive exporter and interruptions to travel from Covid-19, I lost track of Luis Edgar and his coffees—until they reappeared in the Copa de Oro competition in 2025.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The year after my visit, Luis Edgar began to renovate his farm, La Palma, planting the cultivar that has defined Palestina’s reputation for quality: Pink Bourbon. Pink Bourbon—a variety distinct from Bourbon that genetic testing has revealed to be, in fact, an Ethiopian landrace—has been a favorite of mine since it first started appearing on my cupping tables back in 2016 or 2017. Renowned not only for its quality potential but also its resistance to roya and productivity, it is has become a favorite for producers in Southern Huila, where it is well-adapted to the elevations and cooler temperatures.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In 2022, Luis Edgar refined his processing further beyond our work in an effort to further improve cup quality, replacing his tiled, open-air fermentation tanks and wood receiving hopper (which I'd lined with plastic) with cleanable, sealed plastic tanks with an airlock.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This lot—my first purchase from Luis Edgar since we lost touch in 2018—represents the pinnacle of those efforts and presents vibrant and tangy in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003etropical notes of tamarind, pineapple, mandarin orange, caramel, black tea and red currant.\u003c\/strong\u003e\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50569169371440,"sku":"024-retail","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/024_tile.png?v=1769632878"},{"product_id":"xx4-abnetmekonin","title":"XX4 - Abnet Mekonin","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis experimental release was sold exclusively to 2026 season reservation holders and will not be released publicly.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe fourth coffee in our wildcard series is another Aviary-exclusive and first-ever that \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ecomes from a Cup of Excellence winning producer in Bensa, Ethiopia using an unusual and novel processing method: fermented for three days in a pit in the ground lined with enset leaves—presenting winey, bright and intense  with notes of blueberry, raspberry, cherry, pineapple and lime zest.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003e\"We sat at the house of Bekele Kachara’s brother in Murago, drinking coffee and eating handfuls of \u003cem\u003ekocho\u003c\/em\u003e. Bekele’s washing station, just a hundred-meter walk from where we sat and which his brother manages, hummed with activity as the peak harvest approached.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eEnsete ventricosum\u003c\/em\u003e, like \u003cem\u003eCoffea arabica\u003c\/em\u003e, is native to Ethiopia and is a staple food for 20 million of the country’s people. While its fruit is inedible, the roots of the 6m tall tree are a critical source of nutrition which are traditionally pulverized and fermented by the Sidama people until it develops a strong lactic tang with the texture of couscous or fonio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As I felt the caffeine hit my bloodstream and my face caught light from the Bensa sun, I was struck by the parallels between kocho production and coffee post-harvest processing like “bioinnovation” and “anaerobic” methods. In other words: the technology used and perfected by Ethiopians over millennia—using the leaves of the enset tree to line pits dug in the ground, protecting it from insects or soil and providing a cooler environment through which to control fermentation—could also be used for fermenting coffee.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Like in the coffee industry, where women provide the critical labor of picking cherry and sorting for defects, women hold the traditional knowledge of enset; they prepare the pit in the ground, roast and pulverize the roots of the young trees, and carefully ferment the pulp for weeks underground. And—as in coffee—women typically go unrecognized for their contributions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I mused with Bekele that it would be fun to try to produce coffee the way that kocho was produced—and to have his wife produce the lot in the same way she would produce kocho. In turn, I would buy the resulting coffee, no matter the cup outcome, and market the lot under her name.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Only 45 kilograms of coffee processed using this method were ever produced; Aviary bought all of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"\u003c\/strong\u003eThe result of this process is an unusual cup—\u003cstrong\u003etropical and funky aromatics open to intense, winey, chocolatey notes of raspberry, cherry, blueberry, and lime zest.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":50600978874672,"sku":"xx4-retail","price":60.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/xx4tile.png?v=1772393454"},{"product_id":"025-maria-nieves","title":"025 - Maria Nieves","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe fourth coffee of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive and our third from the producer of one of Aviary's earliest releases: Maria Nieves.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e After shipping disruptions impacted the cup quality of last year's release, our determination to purchase from many of the same producers year-over-year rewards us in 2026 as Maria returns to full strength with a bright, tropical, complex cup.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Of all of Aviary's releases in our inaugural season, the one I've longed to taste again came from Maria Nieves and the first year of production of her Gesha trees. That harvest resulted in a coffee that was not only the highest-scoring coffee of all coffees I bought in 2023-2024, but also one of my favorite coffees of Aviary's first season. Ahead of the 2025 season, I committed to purchasing Maria's coffee again—my second purchase from Maria Nieves Tantalean Fernandez, whose leadership of Asprocafe \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003eAlpes Andinos ensures a fair price for the members of the cooperative.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But harvest and export in Peru in 2024 came during a particularly tumultuous period. Lower yields and a rapidly-rising market created not only liquidity challenges but also led to defaults for many cooperatives in the country. These problems delayed exports—as did \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/videos\/cvg6zrvdq7qo\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ehuge waves that struck the Peruvian coastline\u003c\/a\u003e during peak export season. When Maria's coffee did eventually make its way to the Port of New Jersey in 2025, three months late, it had been exposed to heat, humidity and long transit times—all of which are detrimental to quality. I'd paid a premium for a coffee that arrived faded. I did what I could—using rehydration and a very light roast—to present the coffee in the best possible light, all while remembering how great it used to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"The back of the Aviary box features the same phrase that emblazens our homepage: Coffee is an expression of time. 'Time' refers not only to the longitudinal nature of coffee production—with a tree producing after 3-5 years, ripening happening over 9 months, harvest over 2-3, and shipping over weeks or months more—but also meant to depict the very transient and ephemeral nature of coffee. Rather than tasting like a place, a coffee tastes of a particular moment.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"So when it was time to contract coffee for our 2026 season, I again reached out to our partners at Yellow Rooster in Peru to talk about buying from Maria. With the market at all-time highs and competition in Peru compounding premiums on exotic varieties like Gesha, Yellow Rooster was understandably cautious about their contracting, particularly after the shipping issues they faced last year. Risk means different things depending on your vantage in the supply chain, but for an importer, risk of product failure—of paying a premium for a coffee that might need to be sold at a loss—is an unacceptable outcome in a market plagued by illiquidity and expensive financing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"While roasters can simply choose not to buy, producers do not have the luxury of choosing not to sell: coffee production is their business, with coffee itself being the product. And with harvest occurring just once a year, most producers survive on credit and other forms of financing; a single harvest sold at a loss or sold below market pricing doesn't just have a single year impact, but rather may impact profitability for years to come by reducing a producer's ability to re-invest in their farm's management.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"As a roaster, when we buy coffee year-over-year, we help to mitigate risk for producers and create stability. And so, we committed to purchase again.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e\"Buying year-over-year enables us to taste the progression of time over every season and the impacts of every variable on the cup. Even producers who are in the highest elevations growing the highest-quality cultivars may experience disruptions—through labor shortages, climate change, war, political disruption, market volatility or 10 meter waves that delay shipping—that result in years of worse quality, as we experienced last year.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But by choosing to buy anyway—even in down years—we have the privilege of being there when the quality is once again meteoric.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And this year, it is, indeed meteoric: \u003cstrong\u003ea complex, mouth-filling, bright, vibrant coffee with notes of bergamot, rosehip, passionfruit, raspberry and tangerine\u003c\/strong\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g \/ Light","offer_id":50795671617840,"sku":"025-retail","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"200g \/ Ultralight","offer_id":66510983430448,"sku":"025-UL","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/025_tile.png?v=1772392838"},{"product_id":"026-lino-rodriguez","title":"026 - Lino Rodriguez","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe fifth coffee of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive—a stunning honey-processed Gesha from three-time Aviary-featured and six-time Cup of Excellence awarded producer Lino Rodriguez in Colombia presenting in the cup with brilliant, vibrant notes of yuzu, blood orange, mango, passionfruit and red currant. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Last year, I sent Lino a message on Whatsapp to ask him how the harvest was going and when he thought he might have samples ready. His reply was the usual one: 'Que cafés estás buscando?' \u003cem\u003eWhat coffees are you looking for?\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"It's a question I've gotten used to from Lino—at this point, I've been buying coffee from him for almost ten years—since before he won the Cup of Excellence or built the reputation he has today. Back then, at the beginning of our collaboration, I was paired with Lino by Salomé Puentes, then of Caravela Coffee (now of Teco Coffee in Guatemala) to conduct processing experimentation in an effort to improve the cup characteristics of the Castillo on his family farm through controlled fermentation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Lino is a quality-driven producer who studied agriculture in university; he manages his family's farm and processing methodically and with an openness to new practices.\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e It's not a surprise that his care and intentionality paved his way to \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eway to wins and top-placements in the Cup of Excellence in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I've cupped with Lino enough to trust his understanding of my preferences, and we have a lighthearted rapport, so I responded with a playful request: 'Para mi? Solo lo mejor, jajaja.' He responded, affirmatively, 'Listo.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A week or two later, a tranche of samples arrived at my door—samples that, it turns out, came from lots that Lino had set aside to enter into the 2026 Tierra de Diversidad Competition. As a gesture of our years of working together, Lino let me have first pick.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I was torn between two lots—a Pink Bourbon that rivaled any I've had from him before, including AVIARY#004—and a honey processed Gesha that exceeded the high bar Lino set last year with AVIARY#011. This year, Lino told me, the changing climate meant heavier rains during the year; those rains made the cherry reach maturity faster without concentrating sugars in the seed or fruit. As a result, for the Honey-processed Gesha, Lino fermented the coffee 24 hours longer in order to express additional fruit acidity.\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I wanted to showcase Lino's brilliance as a process engineer and his adaptability to the unpredictable weather of Huila—and the t\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003ehe resulting cup settled my decision: \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eexplosively bright and vibrant, with blood orange sweetness and tropical notes of mango, yuzu, and passionfruit layered with red currant.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g \/ Light","offer_id":51195966357808,"sku":"026-retail","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"200g \/ Ultralight","offer_id":66735949742384,"sku":"026-UL","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/026tile.png?v=1775852268"},{"product_id":"027-stanislas-kayitera","title":"027 - Stanislas Kayitera","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe sixth coffee of our 2026 season comes to us from Stanislas Kayitera, a smallholder who has historically contributed to larger collections from hundreds of producers at Baho's Akagera site in Rwanda. This lot demonstrates how large-scale and community factories can be leveraged to create value for individual smallholders through intentional lot separation from cherry collection through to processing and milling, presenting in the cup with bright notes of white grapefruit, lime, green melon, and orange with brown sugar sweetness.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom Christopher: \"I'm enthusiastic about supporting young importing companies when I can, particularly when they've committed to marketing coffee from a particular producer or supply chain. This interest—coupled with my love for coffee from Rwanda—led me to begin buying from Ben Bowdoin and his company, Sundog Trading, in 2020.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the 1970s and 1980s, coffee played a central role in the economy of Rwanda and provided a living for hundreds of thousands of smallholder coffee farmers and their families. The industry collapsed, however, following the implosion of the International Coffee Agreement, which devastated prices, and the genocide that followed in the aftermath. Following the end of the genocide, coffee production took a central role in the economic and cultural reconstruction of Rwanda.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the genocide's survivors, Emmanuel Rusatira, would go on to first manage washing stations for other exporters and then eventually found his own export company and washing stations—establishing his company with a mission of celebrating his \u003cem\u003ejoie de vivre \u003c\/em\u003eand the perseverance\u003cem\u003e \u003c\/em\u003eof the Rwandan while promoting meaningful economic opportunity for his community.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In April of last year, I chatted with Ben and Emmanuel at SCA Expo in Houston about what our collaboration would look like for the coming year. For Aviary's 2025 season, we'd explored honey processing at one of Baho's stations, and I wanted to continue refining the cup and devised a number of processing protocols for 2026. When the pre-ship samples arrived in September, I was ecstatic with the resulting cups and asked Ben to proceed to shipment.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But when you work across continents and timezones and months as we do in coffee, things don't always go according to plan. The coffee that eventually became AVIARY#027 wasn't the coffee I had in mind for this release—but nonetheless, it's one I'm thrilled to present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In many contexts in coffee—particularly in East Africa—scale and volume are prioritized first, as it's easier and more economical to mill, sell and ship larger lots versus microlots. Thus, it's standard practice for microlots to be deprioritized; even if it's not my preference, it's not usually an issue in compressed harvest cycles and when coffee can be stored and stabilized in GrainPro or other protective barriers to prevent a coffee's humidity from rising after primary postharvest activities were completed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But the conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo made the transportation of goods into the country difficult. A shortage of GrainPro bags meant that the coffee sat unprotected awaiting the rest of the harvest to complete prior to milling; as its moisture crept up, so too did the risk of quality degradation prior to export. We worked to recover, but at every turn were met with interference: there were no vacuum bags available, and the cost of air shipping escalated as Russia's invasion of Ukraine dragged on, raising the risk profile further and further still.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"After a month of effort, we had to abandon our plan and pivot: instead of pulling my volume from Sundog and Baho—both long-term partners and collaborators of mine—we looked to replace the lot with another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Back in 2020 or 2021, I bought coffee through Sundog from Baho for the first time, from Emmanuel's station at Akagera—just a year after Baho took over the site from the financially struggling Kobakanya Cooperative. In the years that followed, coffees coming from the 515 farmers growing coffee on that hill—including Kobakanya, still in partnership with Baho—consistently cupped above the other stations, even those with higher elevations or apparently more attention. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the smallholders who contributed to those collections was Stanislas—a founding member of the Kobakanya Cooperative. A coffee farmer for more than 40 years—beginning before the genocide against the Tutsis—Stanislas grew on 5 hectares, an area roughly 20 times larger than the national average and large enough to produce coffee that could justify its own separation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"During my work with Crop to Cup in Ethiopia, I advocated for a strategy of using community and cooperative washing station infrastructure—large-scale and designed for volumetric production—to benefit individual smallholders. By isolating their collections, processing them separately and maintaining their integrity through export, we could deliver greater value for those producers while benefitting the collective.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Emmanuel agrees and wants to highlight the work of model farmers in the communities in which his business operates. In his words: '\u003cspan\u003eThese are farmers that do coffee farming as a business and they really show full commitment to their work. They serve as model in good agricultural practices, soil management, erosion control, environmental conservation practices as well as giving jobs to many other small farmers in need especially during harvest…The reason why Baho coffee selected to process and market their production separately from others is because we wanted to motivate them. Selling coffee in their names makes them proud and increases their energy and commitment. Baho will market, promote their coffee and pay them better prices that is higher than any other farm in the region\/country.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cspan class=\"Apple-tab-span\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"So when the coffee we produced together failed—and when a lot from Stanislas showed up on my table using a strategy I've promoted and coming from a hill whose coffee I've long cherished—I saw an ideal candidate for replacement.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"\u003e\"Stanislas' coffee is an exemplar of the style of coffee that Baho and its contributing farmers excel at producing but with laser-refined precision, presenting in the cup \u003cstrong\u003ewith bright, tropical notes of lime, grapefruit, green melon and orange with a brown sugar sweetness and black tea florality.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":66571260264752,"sku":"027-retail","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/027tile.png?v=1777823471"},{"product_id":"028-jhon-didier-trujillo","title":"028 - Jhon Didier Trujillo","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe seventh release of our 2026 season is an Aviary-exclusive separation and marks a triumphant return for Jhon Didier Trujillo to Aviary's lineup with a washed Chiroso that is the result of a years-long collaboration between Jhon Didier, Unblended and Christopher Feran, presenting with a dense, bright, structured cup with notes of mango, passionfruit, lime and peach.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"During Aviary's inaugural season in 2024, we featured the first export and first harvest from a producer in Urrao named Jhon Didier Trujillo. As part of Aviary's efforts to purchase from many of the same producers year-over-year when possible, I reached out Unblended ahead of the of the 2025 season, requesting a set of separations from Jhon Didier. By purchasing from coffee producers every season, we use our purchasing to help create economic stability for producers—not only incentivizing quality and reinvestment in their production, but enabling them to cover the ever-increasing costs of operating a coffee farm in 2026, driven higher and higher still by the U.S. aggression in Iran, Russian aggression in Ukraine and the aftermath of Covid's shipping disruptions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the best case, it takes a coffee tree three years to produce; typically, though, it can take anywhere from 4-5 years for a tree to reach full production. This means that for someone looking to begin growing coffee, it's an investment—one with an uncertain outcome. When he decided to begin growing coffee, he planted what he called \u003cem\u003eCaturra Chiroso \u003c\/em\u003eusing seeds he got from Carmen Montoya, whose father got seedlings from Fabian Castrillon, who brought the trees to Urrao from Sonson. Genetic testing performed using a separation of two different varieties called \"Chiroso\" in a collaboration between Unblended and Sey revealed the coffee's true genetic origins as a likely Ethiopian landrace—origins that explain the coffee's high quality potential. Seeking a high price for his coffee, knowing that quality was important, and hearing that Chiroso from Urrao has become well-known among specialty buyers, Jhon planted exclusively Chiroso on his farm—5,000 trees under the shade of lulo and banana trees.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"When the samples from Jhon Didier's second harvest arrived, I was surprised to discover that the majority contained a specific defect known as phenol—a cup taint which tastes like iodine and overwhelms any sweetness or fruit character. Unfortunately, as a result, I wasn't able to purchase any coffee from Jhon Didier for Aviary's 2025 season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As I've \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2024\/06\/14\/cupping-is-a-game-of-chance\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ewritten about in the past\u003c\/a\u003e, phenol is complicated, coming from many causes and often difficult to predict. Its most common causes, though, are found in hygiene and sanitation—usually old coffee stuck to pulping or fermentation equipment—as well as drying coffee in too-humid and too-hot conditions that promote fungal growth. But I saw potential in Jhon Didier's coffee and sent Lucas from Unblended a message on Whatsapp. I wanted to launch a project with a primary goal of reducing phenol in Jhon Didier's production and a secondary goal of optimizing the fermentation protocol to highlight the quality potential of the Chiroso he grows—then, using our work together as a test case, elevate the quality of the sixty-or-so Chiroso producers with whom Unblended works in Urrao.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Over 18 months, we examined, reworked or rebuilt every part of Jhon Didier's post-harvest processing—from fermentation to drying—through a series of experiments and training camps. In parallel, Lucas and the Unblended team expanded their own capacity for lot separation and granularity in sample collection, dry milling and export in support of this work. Jhon Didier's son, Juan Camilo, joined the Unblended team as a cupper and quickly closed the feedback loop with his father, enabling rapid iteration and scaling of processing experiments and contextualization of his coffees with those from other producers in Urrao—himself quickly becoming an accomplished coffee producer and process engineer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the end, through our collective efforts, we were successful: the lots produced by Jhon Didier during his harvest in late 2025 were free of phenol, consistently dried well and cupped higher than any other coffees I tasted from Urrao this year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This microlot—which Aviary purchased in its entirety—is Jhon Didier's triumph: a dynamic, vibrant, bright cup presenting with \u003cstrong\u003etropical, juicy notes of peach, mango, lime, and passionfruit.\u003c\/strong\u003e\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":66755805380912,"sku":"028-retail","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/028_tile.png?v=1778533034"},{"product_id":"029-alina-milagros","title":"029 - Alina Milagros","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe eighth release of our 2026 season showcases the quality potential of \"Inca Gesha\"—a cultivar with mysterious origins and genetically similar to the fabled Scott Labs Selection 09 from Kenya— when grown at high elevations and processed carefully. This bright, juicy coffee from Alina Milagros presents with vibrant notes of lemongrass, jasmine, orange and green melon with a tamarind-like tanginess and undertone of raspberry.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"\u003cimg\u003e\u003cimg\u003e\u003cimg\u003eIn January, I published \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2026\/01\/02\/the-lost-origins-of-inca-gesha\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ea long-form piece\u003c\/a\u003e exploring the history, mystery and speculation surrounding the cultivar grown in Peru known as “Inca Gesha,” which genetic testing by RD2 Vision revealed to be closely related and perhaps identical to Scott Labs Selection 09—despite the fact that SL-9 was never distributed nor known to be planted outside of Kenya. The cultivar has gained an enthusiastic international following among roasters who prize its Gesha-like florality, intense citrus-like sweetness and high cup potential. This, in turn, has led to its adoption by small producers in Cusco—and increasingly other regions of Peru—transforming the economic opportunity for those specialty coffee producers in the highest elevations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"During a conversation with Benjamin Montgomery of \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/typica.coffee\/en\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eTypica\u003c\/a\u003e, he mentioned reading my piece and observed that a couple of the SL9s they'd contracted for 2026 were quite exceptional. I asked to taste them, as a palate reference, even though he noted that they were no longer available as the pre-contracting window had passed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Among the SL-9 samples on the table, one stood out as sweeter, brighter, more floral—a turned-up version of the others. It had come from Alina Milagros, a smallholder who farms on two hectares at an elevation of 2,400 meters above sea level in the Tablahuasi sector of the Ocobamba district in Cusco. Her farm is remote—accessible only via a rustic wooden bridge which Alina and her family cross daily to purchase supplies and carry out farm work until it, inevitably, washes away each year during the rainy season. The farm's high elevations and the availability of water enable Alina to produce coffee of exceptionally high quality—as evinced by the sample I tasted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I sent my feedback to Benjamin and asked if he’d be willing to ask Alina and her exporter if there was any more of the coffee available. I said I'd pay whatever was required, and that if any of the original buyers backed out, I'd be happy to step in and purchase the remainder of the lot as well. In the end, we were able to purchase all but 20kg.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I'm thrilled to continue to tell the story of Inca Gesha through this microlot, which presents in the cup \u003cstrong\u003ejuicy and bright with notes of lemongrass, jasmine, orange and green melon with a tamarind-like tanginess and undertone of raspberry\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67349519761712,"sku":"029-retail","price":54.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/029_tile.png?v=1784044081"},{"product_id":"xx5-juan-camilo-trujillo","title":"XX5 - Juan Camilo Trujillo: Raise the Bar","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e2026 Season Reservation holders reserved this wildcard release in full through their Subscriber Early Access.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe fifth coffee in our wildcard series is an Aviary-exclusive nanolot that comes Jhon Didier's son, Juan Camilo Trujillo: a \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChiroso doing its finest impression of an Ethiopian landrace grown in Ethiopia, presenting\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e with complex, bright, fruited notes of orange, peach, blueberry and jasmine.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cem\u003eAll profits from the sale of this coffee will be donated to \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.raise-the-bar.coffee\/level-up\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eRaise the Bar\u003c\/a\u003e to provide scholarships for its signature Level Up event in Minneapolis.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \"\u003c\/em\u003eLast September, I flew to Colombia to teach a workshop for a group of producers who work with an exporter called Unblended. We broke into two groups to conduct processing trials. Andres Martinez, former biochemical engineer for the famed El Paraiso estate, taught a sophisticated washed method; I taught the process I’d developed for Basha Bekele in Ethiopia that went on to win the Cup of Excellence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The workshop was held at Jhon Didier Trujillo’s farm, and in attendance was his son, Juan Camilo, who had recently started working with Unblended in quality control. His skill as a cupper meant that he developed a keen and quick understanding of what worked and what didn’t during postharvest processing—insights that enabled him to iterate rapidly as he began processing coffee himself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A couple months later, Juan Camilo submitted a small lot to a regional competition held by Unblended using his own variation of the process we’d workshopped together—and won.  Without a next generation of coffee producers, we won’t have specialty coffee; and without a next generation of baristas and roasters to showcase that coffee and help it reach a new audience, that coffee won’t have enough value to be worth cultivating.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This symbiosis underlies the important work undertaken by Raise the Bar, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professional development, education, and community for early-career coffee professionals. Through their work, we feed the fire of specialty coffee’s next generation of ambassadors, outside of the expensive, often inaccessible pathways kept by legacy institutions such as the Specialty Coffee Association.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Through the sale of this coffee, Aviary is providing a scholarship to Raise the Bar’s flagship event, Level Up, which brings nearly 100 young professionals to Minneapolis for a multi-day retreat with hands-on workshops, mentorship, and a live learning cafe—in the hopes that Juan Camilo’s success can help create opportunity for other young professionals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"We're thrilled to have purchased all of this experimental 9kg nanolot from a promising young producer—who took a landrace from Ethiopia grown in Urrao and elevated it to the quality of its ancestral home, \u003cstrong\u003epresenting with complex, bright, fruited notes of orange, peach, blueberry and jasmine.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.raise-the-bar.coffee\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRaise the Bar\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that provides professional development, education, and community for coffee professionals, especially baristas, managers, and early-career workers who don't have access to the industry's traditional training pipeline. Our flagship event, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.raise-the-bar.coffee\/level-up\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eLevel Up\u003c\/a\u003e, brought 80 people to Minneapolis for a multi-day retreat with hands-on workshops, mentorship, and a live learning cafe. 93% of attendees had barista experience but 28% had zero employer benefits and 44% didn't feel financially stable. We track real outcomes: confidence in negotiating pay, career advancement, and mentoring others at 6 and 12 months. We're now scaling to year-round education through Patreon, trade show activations with CoffeeFest, and Level Up 2.0 this fall. Our 2026 goal is $250,000. Every dollar goes directly to programming, scholarships, and the people doing this work.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67416765038896,"sku":"xx5-retail","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/xx5tile.png?v=1785882949"},{"product_id":"030-san-jeronimo-miramar","title":"030 - San Jerónimo Miramar","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe anticipate this coffee will be roasted for full season subscribers the week of September 6, 2026, with public release to follow.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe ninth coffee of our 2026 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason takes us to the slopes of Volcán Atitlán where the Bressani family—fourth-generation coffee growers—operate a dairy and coffee farm, San Jerónimo Miramar, using a regenerative, agroforestry model. The farm's variety library is a living catalog both of traditional and exotic cultivars from around the world—including Typica San Roque, a mutation of SL28 hailing from Costa Rica that presents in the cup with sweet notes of tangerine, apricot, lime and almond that rest into undertones of mango, peach, and tamarind.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"My fascination with \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2021\/12\/25\/kenya-and-the-decline-of-the-worlds-greatest-coffee\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eKenyan coffees\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2026\/01\/02\/the-lost-origins-of-inca-gesha\/#scottlabs\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe breeding program run by Scott Labs\u003c\/a\u003e that produced some of the most-famous and sought-after cultivars in the world motivates much of the work that I do as a buyer. For this reason, Colombians that taste like Kenyans (such as those from Lino Rodriguez), and apparently-Kenyan cultivars appearing where they were previously unknown (such as SL9\/Inca Gesha in Peru) anchor Aviary's 2026 season.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"On the slopes of Volcán Atitlán lives one of the largest germplasm libraries in Guatemala at Finca San Jerónimo Miramar—the product of four generations of farming by the Bressani family, countless experiments by Anacafe, abandoned variety trials by WCR, and the migration of plants and people from other coffee-growing countries. The farm's use of adaptive genetic management—a conservation practice that uses data about a plant from its productivity to nutrition requirements to quality to disease resistance—means that, through decades and generations, the farm's collection has adapted to the conditions at FSJM and continues to thrive, sometimes even long after the predecessors in their homes of origin have disappeared.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Tucked away in that library was an uncommon cultivar known by the place it was first identified, San Roque in Costa Rica.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"San Roque, believed to be a mutation of SL28, shares the famous Kenyan cultivar's structured acidity and tendency toward blackberry-like cups. A famous agronomist who had worked at the experimental farm owned by Starbucks in Costa Rica came to work at FSJM and brought with him San Roque. It lived quietly there—until my friends, fellow Ohioans and longtime partners to San Jerónimo, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.deeperrootscoffee.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eDeeper Roots\u003c\/a\u003e, came across it on a blind cupping of the farm's cultivar collection. Impressed, Giorgio Bressani and his team went on to plant 4 hectares of San Roque below the farm's dense forest canopy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This year, for Aviary's 2026 season, Giorgio sent along offers of some of FSJM's most-prized and unusual cultivars including a small honey-processed lot of San Roque. Like my friends from Cincinnati, I was impressed and committed to buying the lot—\u003cstrong\u003efinding the cup vibrant and juicy with notes of tangerine, mango , peach, tamarind and orange.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cstrong\u003eOn arrival, the fruitiness of the lot was tamed significantly—but the cup still expressed with high sweetness and florality, with notes of lime, tangerine and apricot.\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWatch our mini-documentary from last season's visit to Finca San Jerónimo Miramar, with more deep history and context about the farm and its operations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba7Dy35FTqA?si=UT39YLfEA0mQLUFa\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67416790303024,"sku":"030-retail","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/030tile.png?v=1785887650"},{"product_id":"xx6-san-jeronimo-miramar","title":"XX6 - San Jerónimo Miramar","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWe anticipate this coffee will be roasted the week of September 13, 2026, with subscribers having the first opportunity to purchase.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe sixth coffee in our wildcard series comes again from our friends at Finca San Jerónimo Miramar and their extensive variety catalog. \"The People's Coffee,\" as it's known, called Sidra—another Ethiopian landrace with mistaken origins—processed using a traditional washed method, presents in the cup with Sidra-typical, tropical notes of lychee, pineapple, lavender and coconut with a trace of herbality and greenness.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis coffee is also available as unroasted, green coffee through \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bsides.coffee\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eB Sides\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003e\"On the slopes of Volcán Atitlán lives one of the largest germplasm libraries in Guatemala at Finca San Jerónimo Miramar—the product of four generations of farming by the Bressani family, countless experiments by Anacafe, abandoned variety trials by WCR, and the migration of plants and people from other coffee-growing countries. The farm's use of adaptive genetic management—a conservation practice that uses data about a plant from its productivity to nutrition requirements to quality to disease resistance—means that, through decades and generations, the farm's collection has adapted to the conditions at FSJM and continues to thrive, sometimes even long after the predecessors in their homes of origin have disappeared.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the cultivars in the collection, Sidra, came to Guatemala via Ecuador, provided by a friend of San Jerónimo, Nicolas Velez of Cafe Velez.  Once believed to be a hybrid of Typica and Bourbon, Sidra came from Finca Experimental Chollo—the experimental variety farm owned by Nestle in Ecuador, founded in 1989. The story of the cultivar’s transmission is one that is now infamous: small producers broke into the facility in the middle of the night and stole seeds of unknown origin or provenance—seeds that turned out by Sidra.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The coffee that came from those plantings was of high quality, spreading Sidra further still and earning its nicknames of 'the People’s Coffee' from its Robin Hood-like origin story, and 'Gesha Killer' due to its performance in competition—a moniker that hinted at its true origins: like Gesha, genetic testing revealed that Sidra is a descendent of Ethiopian landraces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"In an effort to support FSJM’s work in adaptive genetics management and purchase more volume, we’re releasing this washed Sidra through two channels: one roasted by Aviary as part of our Wildcard series, with the remainder of the lot sold to micro- and home roasters through our green coffee and importing platform, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/bsides.coffee\" target=\"_blank\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eB Sides\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This coffee, processed using a traditional washed method, presents in the cup with a profile unusual for Aviary's offerings with \u003cstrong\u003eSidra-typical, tropical notes of lychee, pineapple, lavender and coconut with a trace of herbality and greenness\u003c\/strong\u003e.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWatch our mini-documentary from last season's visit to Finca San Jerónimo Miramar, with more deep history and context about the farm and its operations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba7Dy35FTqA?si=UT39YLfEA0mQLUFa\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67416793776432,"sku":"xx6-retail","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/xx6_tile.png?v=1785887761"},{"product_id":"2026-000a","title":"2026.000a","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eNB: \u003c\/em\u003eWhile still lighter than a traditional espresso roast, our year-round offering, AVIARY#000, is roasted in a more developed style than any of our other releases, optimized to shine in espresso-based milk drinks at up to 1:6 ratios between coffee and milk. It also performs well in 'difficult' brewing conditions using suboptimal equipment or water.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eAVIARY#000 is roasted weekly, once per week.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eOur current continuous release—AVIARY#2026.000a—comes from \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ethe slopes of Volcán Atitlán where the Bressani family—fourth-generation coffee growers—operate a dairy and coffee farm, San Jerónimo Miramar, using a regenerative, agroforestry model. Roasted in a more-developed style, this coffee, brewed as espresso, presents with deep, fudgy notes of cacao nib, plum and red apple with under tones of hibiscus, strawberry\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e and apricot.\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"sample-detail-content p-6 flex-1 overflow-y-auto\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"space-y-5 text-sm\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"\u003cimg\u003eThe collection of cultivars growing at Finca San Jerónimo is the result of decades of work, of movement and migration between countries, of experimental field work, and of intentional adaptive genetics. Field trials from WCR and Anacafe grow among traditional varieties and exotics shared by agronomists, friends and employees.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\"The team there, led by fourth-generation coffee producer Giorgio Bressani, employs  their nursery—germinating seeds from trees whose attributes they want to target, as well as cloning trees to create additional seeds by grafting scions to Canephora or Liberica rootstock—the cupping lab, as well as a detailed record of yields, disease resistance and ripening.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e'Catuai that stands like a tree' is how Giorgio Bressani describes the cultivar he's dubbed 'Arborai' at San Jerónimo Miramar, One of the distinct, locally-adapated varieties that has emerged as a result of this work. Catuaí, a cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra first created in Brazil in 1949 by the Instituto Agronômico in Brazil but released commercially in 1972, is prized by farmers in Latin  America for its compact, dwarf habit which makes it easier to harvest and maintain. However, the tree’s susceptibility to coffee leaf rust and cup quality limitations meant that, all over Central America, as roya ravaged production, Catuai—as Caturra and Bourbon with it—began to fall out of favor.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\"Arborai, with its resistance to rust, taller height that enables it to grow well under the forest canopy at San Jerónimo, and grafted rootstock mitigates these challenges, while offering a more complex, dynamic cup than its predecessors.  For Aviary’s 2026.000.01 release, our first continuously-offered coffee, we wanted to showcase this work—and roast a coffee that performs well with filter methods but that really shines in espresso applications mixed with milk. Like Catuaí, its undertones of chocolate lend well to espresso-based preparations and heavier roasting that accentuates these qualities.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-xs\"\u003e\"Most of the buying I do for Aviary is from smallholders whose primary source of income is coffee production. Smallholders produce the majority of the world's coffee and are very often not only among the most disadvantaged members of the value stream not only in terms of income and market access but also risk.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eMeanwhile, estates are not only larger in scale but commonly have owners whose privilege and access is greater than those of smallholders. Estates typically employ and house dozens or hundreds of people—entire communities in and of themselves—so while their impact can be greater than those of a smallholder, the burden for acting responsibly and doing less harm is even greater, still.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"sample-detail-footer px-6 py-3 flex justify-between items-center lab-divider-t\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"But for that reason, I've long admired the work that the Bressani family—fourth generation coffee growers—are carrying out at Finca San Jerónimo Miramar. FSJM is a testament to what can be achieved when efforts, values and expertise are carried through generations over a century—and a showcase of how farm management can create resiliency for the future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I first purchased coffee from FSJM for Aviary's first season and have since purchased for 2025 and 2026. What I see at FSJM gives me hope: it offers, I think, a tangible demonstration of how a different approach to coffee production—a fully-organic forest system with diversified revenue streams—could offer not only greater resiliency for producers in the face of climate change, but also stability in the face of market volatility.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"This coffee is processed using a traditional honey style that Giorgio refers to as 'slow jam'—pulped and dried slowly to enhance body and sweetness, presenting in the cup with \u003cstrong\u003erich, fudgy notes of cacao nib, plum and red apple with undertones of hibiscus, strawberry\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e and apricot.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWatch our mini-documentary from last season's visit to Finca San Jerónimo Miramar, with more deep history and context about the farm and its operations.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba7Dy35FTqA?si=UT39YLfEA0mQLUFa\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ba7Dy35FTqA?si=UT39YLfEA0mQLUFa\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67417002213680,"sku":"2026.000a-retail","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"1kg","offer_id":67709844193584,"sku":"2026.000a-1kg","price":120.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/2026000atile.png?v=1788274544"},{"product_id":"031-gerald-njagi","title":"031 - Gerald Njagi","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis coffee is exclusively available to Aviary full season subscribers and will be roasted the week of October 4, 2026.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe tenth coffee of our 2026 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason comes from a third-generation coffee producer chasing the revival of the \"World's Greatest Coffee\"— a washed SL* from Gerald Njagi and the Kambarare Estate through the Retro 84 Project, presenting in the cup structured and vibrant with classic Kenyan notes of black and red currant, elderflower, mango, orange blossom and mandarin.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Of all the pieces I've shared on my blog, none has been viewed more times than my post about the apparent decline in the quality of Kenyan coffee, which I referred to as “The World’s Greatest Coffee.” My analysis implicated a few phenomena: from processing practices changing as a result of shrinking production, to a Byzantine marketing system that once  prohibited direct export, to government corruption, and, of course, a changing climate. In spite of this cumulative pressure, though, the quality potential for Kenyan coffee remains high; the country's average quality exceeds many of the best cups I've tasted from a score of other countries.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Much of the discussion around Kenyan coffee quality centers around the now-infamous cultivars that came out of the Scott Laboratories research station in Kenya a century ago—like SL28 and SL34. I've heard much speculation and lament that the apparent decline in Kenyan coffee may also be related to a decline in production of these two high-quality cultivars (SL28 in particular) with the ascendancy of Batian and Ruiru 11.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The 'Retro 84' project, a collaboration born between Peter Mbature of the Kamavindi estate, Tim Hill and Lance Schnorenberg of Sey, aims to recapture the electric Kenyan cups of the past by separating Kenya’s infamous SLs and producing microlots using processing methods more typical of Kenya in the 1980s than 2010s. Third-generation coffee producer Gerald Njagi, whose Kambarare estate is nearby Kamavindi, joined the project for its first year in 2024. More than a decade earlier, in 2011, Tim Hill had fallen in love with coffee from  Kambarare—and Gerald tells me that he’s counted Tim as a close friend since 2013 as he continued to produce and sell coffee to Counter Culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As a young coffee buyer, it was a cup of coffee from Kambarare, roasted by Counter Culture, that transformed my understanding of what Kenyan coffee could be. And my fascination with \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2021\/12\/25\/kenya-and-the-decline-of-the-worlds-greatest-coffee\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eKenyan coffees\u003c\/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/christopherferan.com\/2026\/01\/02\/the-lost-origins-of-inca-gesha\/#scottlabs\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"\u003ethe breeding program run by Scott Labs\u003c\/a\u003e that produced some of the most-famous and sought-after cultivars in the world motivates much of the work that I do as a buyer. For this reason, Colombians that taste like Kenyans (such as those from Lino Rodriguez), and apparently-Kenyan cultivars appearing where they were previously unknown (such as SL9\/Inca Gesha in Peru) anchor Aviary's 2026 season. The mystery of the SL varieties—particularly \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/georgehowellcoffee.com\/blogs\/press\/a-note-from-jenny-discovering-mamutos-dna\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003erecent genetic uncertainty\u003c\/a\u003e surrounding SL28—only heightened my interest in returning to Kenya.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"And so: when Lance invited me to give feedback on some of the coffees from the Retro 84 project this year—and to meet Gerald to talk about experiments for the coming harvest—I was eager. I'm grateful to Lance and Sey for sharing a portion of this lot with Aviary as our introduction to the project—a stunning representation of Kenyan coffee: \u003cstrong\u003evibrant, structured, bright and juicy with notes of black and red currants, orange blossom, mango and elderflower.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":67657626157360,"sku":"031-retail","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/031_tile.png?v=1789566367"},{"product_id":"xx7-majahual","title":"XX7 - Majahual","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis coffee was roasted October 1, 2026, with subscribers having the first opportunity to purchase.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe seventh coffee in our wildcard series showcases SL28 grown in El Salvador and processed using a yeast-controlled cherry dried method, presenting in the cup with vibrant, sticky, fruited notes of mango, red currant and peach.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \u003c\/em\u003e\"Bourbon came to Central America via Brazil, gifted to President Justo Rufino Barrios of Guatemala and then shared by Barrios with his friend Narciso Avilés, the then-mayor of Santa Ana, El Salvador. Three generations later, the great-granddaughter of Narciso, Aida Batlle, would go on to win the Cup of Excellence with coffee grown on her family’s farm, Kilimanjaro, on the Apaneca-Ilamatepec range.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Genetic testing by World Coffee Research and CIRAD would later show that the coffee grown on Aida’s farm—thought to be Bourbon and descended from the trees gifted to her great-grandfather—was, in fact, SL34 and SL28.  While debate has emerged over the possibility that SL28 may no longer exist in Kenya, with exemplars of SL28 from Mamuto and Kamavindi Estates, among others, testing as K7 and SL9, the fact that germplam in El Salvador appears genetically related to SL28 offers enticing possibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"SL28, which was selected by Scott Laboratories in Kenya as a single tree from the Tanganyika Drought Resistant collection, proved to perform well to lower-elevation and drier areas—making it well-suited to the hot and dry conditions in El Salvador as well as the lower elevations of its farms relative to those planted along the Great Rift Valley or Andes ranges.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Just south of Santa Ana on the border of the Sonsonate department, another set of fourth-generation coffee producers, the Murray-Alvarez Family, grow El Salvador’s traditional Bourbon in fertile soils under shade canopy on their farm, Majahual. Patrick and Christina, great-grandchildren of the farm’s founder are working to modernize the farm as a way to combat the volatility of the coffee market and the disruptions of climate change. Part of those efforts include exploring advanced processing in the hopes of serving as a community wet mill to improve the economics of coffee production for their neighbors, and part includes the planting of exotic varieties on their farm—including  SL28.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis year, Majahual produced just 48kg of SL28—processed as a natural using yeast to control the fermentation. Half of that lot went to El Salvador’s Barista Champion for use in competition—and the other half went to Aviary. This beautiful representation of SL28 presented with \u003cstrong\u003evibrant, sticky, fruited notes of mango, red currant and peach with a green tea-like body.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g \/ Correct","offer_id":67709857988912,"sku":"xx7-retail","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"200g \/ Too Light","offer_id":67917614678320,"sku":"xx7-LIGHT","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/xx7tile.png?v=1788274065"},{"product_id":"complete-2027-season","title":"Aviary 2027 Season","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChoose between three levels of access to Aviary's 2027 season. Reservations are limited.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1. Reserve all major releases:\u003c\/strong\u003e Returning for 2027, a full season reservation includes each major Aviary release for the 2027 season plus early access to all releases before public sale—and a discount on all Aviary coffee, beginning today. We'll collect a 10% deposit today with the balance automatically collected on January 1, 2027.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2. Reserve all major \u003cem\u003eand\u003c\/em\u003e minor releases: \u003c\/strong\u003eNew for 2027, we're offering a reservation level that includes all minor, limited releases as well as all each major release for the 2027 season—plus a discount on all Aviary coffee and early access to all releases before public sale. We'll collect a 10% deposit today with the balance automatically collected on January 1, 2027.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e3. Early access only: \u003c\/strong\u003eBecome an Aviary Early Access member and get early access to Aviary releases with full-season subscribers days or weeks before they're made available to the public—and get a discount on all Aviary coffee for the entire year.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAll access levels include a 10% discount all Aviary coffee that begins today through the end of 2027—as well as early access to our 2026 Freezer Sale in December.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher: \"\u003c\/em\u003eSince 2025, Aviary has operated using a model where we sell reservations for a full season of coffee, collecting pre-payment upfront.\u003cspan class=\"Apple-converted-space\"\u003e This program gives us the predictability we needed to purchase coffee on a forward basis and helped to finance work at origin as well as pre-payment of coffees ahead of harvest or arrival.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For 2027, we're once again offering full-season reservations. With this reservation, in addition to securing a box of each major release (free of the chaos and FOMO associated with limited drops), Aviary members will have the first opportunity to purchase additional bags of coffee (pending availability) and our year-round offering at a 10% discount versus the retail price—as well as the first chance to order exclusive, experimental and limited release drops which are too small to make available to the group as a whole and before they're posted for public sale.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For the first time, we're also offering two new reservation level options: a higher tier, which will include every minor, \"wildcard\" release; as well as a lower tier which does not include any coffee right away but gives a 10% discount on all Aviary coffee as well as early access to coffees before they're released to the public.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The idea here is to pool Aviary customers into a purchasing group, enabling us to pre-contract coffees for that group and, in some cases, pre-pay or pre-finance those coffees yet to be produced. This model is inspired by community supported agriculture models in the U.S. and is a way to leverage consumer interest to supersede some of the greatest challenges faced to businesses across the industry—namely, liquidity and access to financing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The high cost of the program is related to low roasting volumes and the nature of Aviary's sourcing style, which goes deep into supply chains offering training, feedback and support—with a goal of using the Aviary platform to highlight the work of lesser-known producers and connect them to a broader market. Aviary reservations also subsidize other work which is provided through my platform free of charge, including my blog and content across various channels as well as pro bono work supporting coffee producers and exporters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Aviary aims to release one coffee per calendar month in 2027 with somewhere between 5-7 wildcard releases through the year as well as our continually-available offering for milk-based espresso drinks—and will continue to showcase work that we find to be notable and interesting, with an emphasis on clean, bright coffees from smallholders and those otherwise lesser-known producers. As in our 2026 season, we will exclusively be roasting on the Roest P3000.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"For those customers who subscribe, thank you in advance for the trust you place in my sourcing and roasting; I aim to continue to produce the styles of coffee I enjoy drinking and commit to using the revenues from Aviary to engaging with the work of buying coffee in a critical and responsible way.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"Major releases only","offer_id":67713984659760,"sku":"2027-season-major","price":500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"All major + minor releases","offer_id":67713984626992,"sku":"2027-season-all","price":750.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Early access only","offer_id":67713984692528,"sku":"2027-season-ea","price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/2027_Season_tile_3.png?v=1790088670"},{"product_id":"032-niguse-kayimo","title":"032 - Niguse Kayimo","description":"\u003ch3\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: #ff2a00;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis coffee is exclusively available to Aviary full season subscribers and will be roasted the week of November 1, 2026.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe eleventh coffee of our 2026 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eseason comes from Bensa, Ethiopia through a collaboration between Christopher Feran and CoQua—a single-producer fermented honey 74158 presenting vibrant and tropical with juicy, tangy notes of peach, mango and mandarin orange.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom Christopher\u003c\/em\u003e: \"Last year, early in the Ethiopian harvest, I had a call with Moata Raya of CoQua. We reflected on the successes of our work together during my three years sourcing coffee in Ethiopia with \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fkl5QVYIAo0\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eCrop to Cup Coffee Importers\u003c\/a\u003e and admired the growth of the producers we'd supported. We'd worked to build market access for lesser-known and under-represented coffee producers with a particular focus on smallholders, who produce the majority of the country's coffee yet receive the least value from premiums paid at export. As part of that work, we supported smallholders who obtained export licenses following the 2017 export market liberalization in an effort to improve their equity in the supply chain. By exporting directly rather than selling their coffee as cherry, producers stand to gain greater value for their harvest and increase their financial security.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As a pilot program, we identified a group of producers with high quality potential and provided them with not only marketing support and market access but also material support in the form of shade cloth, barrels for fermentation as well as disc pulpers as well as processing guidance. These investments enabled them to produce wet-processed coffees for the first time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Eight years after export liberalization, it's still rare to find single-producer, smallholder wet processed coffees from Southern Ethiopia. Large-scale, privately-owned washing stations dot Sidama, Guji and Yirgacheffe and process lots using cherry collected from hundreds or thousands of farmers each; without access to smaller-scale mills, smallholder-exporters nearly exclusively produce cherry-dried naturals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Following the success of that first round of producers in Bensa, which included future Cup of Excellence winners Basha Bekele (AVIARY#008) and Mate Matiwos (AVIARY#007) as well as Bekele Belaychow (AVIARY#005), we expanded our interventions—providing pulpers for Shibru Dube (AVIARY#023) in Chelchele; Bekele Kachara, Bekele Yutute and Tuke Yute in Bensa; and Reshad Abababulgu in Agaro. As those producers found markets for their coffees with roasters willing to pay a premium, other producers invested in their own pulpers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"By the end of our work together, producers who started as smallholders grew into medium- and large-scale exporters with multiple processing stations, trucks for cherry collection, and full-time employees. Nguisse Nare, who had bought his own simple one-disc pulper in 2025 opened a full-scale washing station in Bensa in 2026. Rather than thinking of themselves as producers and farmers, they thought of themselves as exporters first—if they even grew coffee anymore, at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"I told Moata I didn't want to lose sight of the importance of working with Ethiopian smallholder—the too-often invisible people whose work is primarily responsible for Ethiopia's infamous quality. While Ethiopia is built for scale—large scale factories and minimum milling volumes of 30 bag lots are the norm—inspired by the model of production I'd seen in Colombia, I asked Moata for his help ahead of Aviary's 2026 season to \u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eidentify\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003e a smallholder with very high quality potential and invite them to produce coffee using a protocol I'd written, with the aim of paying well above the government's minimum export price for the lot. Moata would partner with them to oversee processing, and my friends at Crop to Cup would facilitate the import.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Moata identified Niguse Kayimo as the ideal candidate. His farm, planted with 74158 at 2200 meters above sea level in Bensa, fit the profile of the successful processing work we'd done in the past. His son, newly involved in the business, saw the potential of specialty coffee for his family and would oversee the processing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The resulting lot, shipped via air as a result of delays stemming from the United States and Israel's war of aggression in the region, arrived in August. Before committing it to cryostorage, we cupped an arrival sample, which presented with \u003cstrong\u003evibrant and tropical notes of peach, mango and mandarin orange.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aviary","offers":[{"title":"200g","offer_id":68008124514608,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0849\/8305\/4640\/files\/032tile.png?v=1791820927"}],"url":"https:\/\/aviary.coffee\/collections\/coffee-archive.oembed?page=3","provider":"Aviary","version":"1.0","type":"link"}