Ethiopia - Alo Main Station - Natural

"The dry aroma is rich with blueberry, grape, white peach, bergamot, and sweet floral notes. On the sip, blueberry, purple grape, and white peach lead, supported by mango, bergamot, and frangipani aromatics, with a sweet, juicy profile." Tamiru Tadesse established Alo Coffee with the goal of building a quality-focused pathway for smallholders in Sidama’s Bensa area, centering his work around the Alo Main Station where nearby farmers deliver cherry for careful post-harvest handling. He approached the project as a deliberate leap, drawing on prior experience in the coffee sector and committing to transparent, station-led lot separation rather than anonymous aggregation. The operation is structured around collaboration, with roughly 60 farmers delivering to the main Alo washing station and many more supplying other Alo stations, and it channels value back into local needs through initiatives like a school, seedling nursery, and seasonal quality bonuses. A defining early milestone was the recognition the group achieved through Ethiopia’s Cup of Excellence, which helped validate the station’s quality standards and the community’s effort. Alo Main Station sits in the high elevations of Bensa in the Sidama region, where the combination of altitude and a cool growing environment supports slow cherry maturation and dense seed development. This landscape is often described in terms of the Bensa mountains and steep, highland terrain surrounding Alo Village, with reported elevations commonly falling in the 2,400–2,550 meter range for this station’s sourcing context. Sidama’s broader agricultural setting includes fertile soils and reliable rainfall patterns, with coffee production shaped by smallholder parcels that are later consolidated at central stations like Alo. The station model matters here: it allows tight intake control and a consistent drying protocol even when farm sizes are small and lots arrive in many deliveries. The primary variety associated with Alo Main Station naturals is JARC 74158, a selection developed in Ethiopia with an emphasis on resilience and cup performance, and widely referenced as Alo Coffee’s main planting material in the area. In practice, 74158 is well suited to high-elevation systems where longer ripening windows can translate into layered sweetness and aromatic lift. When lots are separated carefully at the station, the variety’s character tends to show with clarity, supporting expressive fruit notes without requiring heavy processing intervention. For Alo, focusing on a defined cultivar also enables more repeatable fermentation and drying management across seasons, which is essential when working with many smallholders delivering to the same intake point. For this natural lot, harvesting begins with selective handpicking of ripe red cherry, followed by delivery to the Alo main station where intake is tightly controlled through visual hand sorting to keep only properly mature fruit. The coffee is then dried as whole cherry on raised beds, with frequent raking/turning to promote even airflow and consistent moisture loss across the layer. A representative drying duration for Alo’s natural protocol is about three weeks, after which the cherry is stabilized and prepared for downstream milling prior to export. This approach keeps the process straightforward and traceable: controlled selection at intake, careful bed drying, and disciplined day-to-day management until the coffee is fully dried. Variety : 74158Altitude : 2,400–2,550 maslProcess : NaturalOrigin : Sidama, Bensa