Chelchele comes from the village of Banko Chelchele, in the Gedeb Woreda of Ethiopia's Gedeo Zone, part of the wider Yirgacheffe growing region, one of the most celebrated coffee origins in the world. Grown at altitudes between 1,900 and 2,300 meters in fertile red clay soils, this is coffee from a landscape that seems almost purpose-built for it.
The coffee here is produced by a community of smallholder farmers for whom coffee is both livelihood and tradition. During harvest, which runs from October to December, cherries are hand-picked selectively, with particular attention to ripeness. That care at picking is the foundation everything else is built on.
The Banko Chelchele processing site employs more than 210 workers and maintains a close relationship with the farming community: offering financial support, subcontracting opportunities, and premium payments tied to the quality of each delivery. After primary processing on-site, the coffee is transported to a dry mill in Addis Ababa, where it is sorted by density and screen size, cleaned, and packed in jute bags with Ecotact liners before export. From there, it travels by rail to Djibouti, a journey as considered as the processing itself.