This is kind of a weird one. So, everyone always lists “Ethiopian Heirloom Varieties” on their labels, partially because it is really hard to sort out the varieties that exist in Ethiopia. Thing is, the varieties that are cultivated in Ethiopia are known and have names, just like everywhere else. One year, I decided to learn all I could about Yirgacheffe, so I spent a number of days there, cruising around and talking to everyone who would talk to me. I was trying to document all of the subregions of Yirgacheffe (each hamlet in that area has a name, and the coffees can vary dramatically even within that small Yirgacheffe area) and get some detail on the coffee culture of that area. When I would ask about varieties, one that would come up sometimes was called “Degu”. It seemed to me that Degu was more common to the East of Yirgacheffe than to the West, I finally got to see my first Degu tree when I visited the hamlet of Idido, a few miles due East of Yirgacheffe. When I saw it, I was shocked:
Here is a Degu cherry. See those little leaves growing out of the end of it? Each cherry had these wee leaves, growing out of the end of the cherry. Isn’t that weird? The cherries of Degu are big and round and beautiful, they look like plump grapes. They are a bright orangey-red, almost vermillion in color. On that trip, I developed the hypothesis that perhaps some of the variation we experience in flavor in different areas around Yirgacheffe is due to different proportions of varieties. It’s a pet hypothesis I maintain still.
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