NOTES: RED GRAPES, ORANGE CITRUS, JASMINE FLORALS, DELICATE BLACK TEA, MILK CHOCOLATE

The Konga village lies close to the town of Yirgacheffe in the Gedeo zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region. The village has a couple of wet mills where farmers can sell their cherry. The mills take care of processing the cherries and drying the parchment in the case of this washed coffee.

Coffee from Konga is typically grown on a very small scale in the garden of the producer, where it is intercropped with other subsistence crops. The red-brown soils in the area have a high iron content and a depth of over 1.5m.

This is important for coffee because deep soils allow for the development of an extensive root system, meaning that the coffee plant can get more nutrients and moisture from the soil. A deeper root system also means stronger and taller trees. Soil depth also dictates the soil moisture storage and nutrient storage capacity. Deeper soils naturally have more nutrients and moisture available for the plants growing in them.

Soil and its nutrients can be regionally specific, varying with local geology. The soils in Konga (and basically the entire larger Gedeo zone), as mentioned before, have high iron content. Iron is one of the micronutrients that play an important role in the coffee plant’s functioning. The nutrient is needed to produce chlorophyll, which is essential for photosynthesis, allowing the plant to absorb energy from light. High iron soils, together with many other factors, of course, give the plant more energy to grow and produce cherries.