Banko Gotiti - An Ethiopian Love Story

In the Gedeb district of Ethiopia’s Gedeo Zone, deep in the heart of Yirgacheffe, Banko Gotiti sits high, cool, and quietly legendary. This is heirloom territory. Garden plots. Red soil. Altitude is doing its slow, patient work.

The place where Arabica didn’t just originate, it evolved. The washing station brings together fruit from roughly 2,000 smallholder farmers, each tending tiny plots with a deep understanding of timing, ripeness, and care. The result is coffee that doesn’t shout, but speaks clearly.

This latest Heady Drop is from Banko Gotiti; it is an anaerobic natural that sings with the best of them. Hitting the high notes of delicate florals, hints of lavender drift right out of the gate, followed by juicy pineapple, candied lemon that feels seductive and curious, all wrapped up in a soft, warming chocolate finish that lingers just long enough to make you go back for another sip.

This coffee is loud. It is expressive with a wild playfulness without ever losing its composure, elegant to the last drop, a classic Yirgacheffe that is just a little wild.

Yirgacheffe farming remains beautifully traditional and rural. Nearly all the producers are smallholders who intercrop coffee with other food crops, maximizing land use while feeding families and strengthening their communities and ecosystems. Most of the farms are organic by design or rather by default, not because it is the hip and trendy thing to do, but because it’s how it’s always been, almost everything by hand. Coffee grown with intention, patience, and pride.

Banko Gotiti builds on this legacy by offering focused training that helps farmers unlock the full potential of an already challenging climate, staying in tune with the harvest, cherry handling, transportation, and all the small things that make a big impact. Since quality is inherent in these coffees, it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel; just let the coffee speak for itself.