Passage Coffee | Worka Sakaro Riped Cherry Washed - Ethiopia

Passage Coffee 

Known for their commitment to quality and sustainability, Passage Coffee works closely with some of the world’s best coffee farms to bring you exceptional blends and single-origin beans.

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A coffee bean full of individuality born from a single seed. 

The journey of a single coffee bean continues from the place of production, passing through various transit points, until the moment it is poured into a cup. 

Just like the fruits that you love, coffee beans contain a variety of flavours, such as lemon, peach, blueberry, and sometimes flowers. 

In order to bring out the original charm of the ingredients, Passage Coffee's baristas are particular about the entire process from coffee beans to turning them into 'coffee.' 

We hope that the journey of a single bean will continue into people's daily lives, making coffee feel closer to them. 

Worka Sakaro

The Gedeo Zone, located east of the Yirgacheffe region, is divided into six districts, one of which is Gedeb.

Located 434 km from the capital Addis Ababa, it was a remote area that took nearly eight hours by car until a few years ago. However, with the opening of the Ethio-Kenya Highway in 2016, the travel time has been reduced to just three hours.

This region of Ethiopia has an ideal environment for coffee production, with coffee planted on a quarter of the land.

The Gedeb region is divided into 16 administrative districts, one of which is Worka Sakaro.

Worka means "gold" in the local Gedeo language, and when a subordinate of Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie, visited the area, he was so impressed by the hospitality shown to him by the people that he came to call it Woleka (the land of gold).

The area is also home to giant trees that the locals affectionately call "Sakaro," and the combination of these two words gave the place its name, "Worka Sakaro."

The land area is approximately 1,300 hectares, more than half of which is planted with coffee, and there are three washing factories.

One of these factories was acquired in March 2017 by Ranger (employees wearing the green uniforms shown in the photo), a sister company of BNT (an exporter of high-quality Ethiopian coffee). They employ talented staff at competitive wages to meticulously carry out the refining and drying processes.

They have begun their efforts to produce even higher quality Yirgacheffe coffee. (In 2018, they also acquired two other washing factories in Gedeb.)

The Worka Sakaro washing factory was opened with the 2019 crop by BNT subsidiary Ranger (employees wearing the green uniforms shown in the photo), with the aim of producing the best Yirgacheffe coffee ever.

We assemble talented staff at a fair wage, and carefully carry out the refining and drying processes.

The 2018 crop, our first year of fully ripe cherries, was overseen by WBC 2016 champion BergWu, and was well received for its excellent sweetness, as its name suggests.