Gatta

Daye Bensa was founded by brothers Assefa and Mulugeta Dukamo, producers from the Bensa area of Sidama who have spent more than two decades building one of Ethiopia’s leading coffee export businesses. Today, they work with coffee from their own farms as well as affiliated growers across the region, while maintaining a strong focus on specialty production.

This lot comes from Gatta Farm, the heart of Daye Bensa’s dedicated specialty programme. The site sits in Shantawene Village, Bensa, at high elevation among natural forest, indigenous trees, rivers, and waterfalls. Gatta itself takes its name from a waterfall that crosses the farm. The land was originally natural forest, later identified for coffee by Mulugeta Dukamo during the construction of the nearby Gafisse Station. The first coffee plantings began in 2013, followed by the establishment of a drying station in 2017 once the trees had matured.

The surrounding vegetation is not incidental to the story of the coffee — it provides natural shade across both the farm and drying areas, helping shape the slower, more protected environment in which the coffee grows and dries. Plantation, harvesting, and processing are largely carried out by local residents, linking the work at Gatta closely to the surrounding community.

For this honey-processed lot, ripe cherries are pulped, with varying amounts of mucilage left intact before the coffee is transferred to raised beds for drying. That processing choice is a big part of what makes the cup so compelling: it carries some of the sweetness and fruit weight often associated with natural lots, while retaining a cleaner, more floral clarity.