Bisrat Melaku

Always interested in fun information to share about a coffee or an interesting angle to write about, something that always stands out with an Ethiopian coffee is an entire lot comprised of one named variety. That’s a rarity. So upon digging in a bit on wolisho, my head began to spin. But let’s start easy, with what we know. We know that it’s a landrace selection– meaning that it naturally evolved in a certain microregion, and was eventually selected for propagation after finding some favor amongst growers. We know it’s largely grown across Gedeo, Guji, and Sidama. We know it does well at very high altitudes, and can produce a stellar cup.  

What makes wolisho very interesting to me is that it highlights the difficulties of documenting and categorizing landrace varieties. Named after a similar-looking non-coffee tree, wolisho, tracing the fractals of the same name across regions, languages and dialects would require quite the undertaking. For instance, when talking about named landrace varieties in this area with three primary languages, one quickly amasses all of: waliso, walancho, welencho, wecincho, awicho, gantincho, gidicho, kolisho, kolinsho– all in addition to the commonly accepted variations of the same coffee: wolisho, walisho, walichu, and welicho.

So, while the scope of identifying and categorizing landrace varieties may be a fascinating but confusing road to walk, I’ll tell you one thing for sure that no one is confused about: how this coffee tastes. We loved this lot so much last year that it was one of the first coffees we booked in for this year, certain that it would live up to our expectations– and wow, was that a good bet.