What 'natural process' actually means
Every bag of coffee tells you the process, and most people skip right over it. It's worth a minute, because process explains more about how a coffee tastes than almost anything else on the label.
Coffee is the seed of a fruit. In a washed coffee, the fruit is stripped off the seed within a day of picking, and the seed is fermented briefly and dried clean. The result tends to be bright and clear: you taste the variety and the soil.
In a natural coffee, the whole cherry is dried with the fruit still on. At Worka Sakaro, that takes about three weeks on raised beds, with workers turning the cherries by hand several times a day so nothing molds. As the fruit dries, its sugars and acids move into the seed. The result is heavier, sweeter, and fruitier. Our Gedeb lot tastes like blueberries because, in a real sense, it was fermented in fruit.
Naturals are harder to do well. A badly managed natural tastes boozy or dirty. A well-managed one is one of the best things you'll drink this year. We tasted eleven naturals from Gedeo this season before choosing this one.