By Joel Denker
How many of us imagine Ethiopia when we think of coffee? More likely, it conjures up Brazil, a latecomer to the bean, which only became a dominant producer nearly two hundred years ago. The coffee plant in East Africa, on the other hand, goes back thousands of years. “Natural” coffee, as the Ethiopians call it, still grows wild in the country’s highland rainforests.
Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee arabica, the dominant and also the best quality and most aromatic species. As its botanical name suggests, Ethiopia was not even recognized by the plant classifier, Linnaeus, who linked the shrub to its Islamic cultivators (more about them later)
At the Black Lion, an Ethiopian grocery in Columbia Heights, the East African coffee world became vivid and real to me. Emebet Tsiga (also known as Amy) showed me small green beans from Harar and Kaffa, bastions of the country’s coffee culture. When roasted, she says, the beans fill the room with a delicious fragrance.
Amy recalls the coffee ceremony, the tradition her family in Ethiopia religiously observed. An elaborate event with precise steps of roasting, grinding, brewing, and serving buna (its Ethiopian name), the ritual binds the gathered friends and family. Amy’s family performed the sacramental rite several times a day—after lunch, work, dinner, and church. The more solitary American coffee habit struck Amy as strange. “At home people don’t drink alone.”
Shaded by the forest canopy, Ethiopian coffee grows on large, leafy shrubs. Small white flowers with a tantalizing jasmine fragrance bloom on the branches of the evergreens. After the flowering, bunches of “cherries,” first green, then yellow, red, or crimson, sprout. These vivid fruits enclose the bean from which the coffee drink is made.
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To learn more about coffee, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
