The New York-based roastery SEY has been working with producer Esayas Beris for several seasons now, and the quality of his coffee remains exceptional year after year. Buku Sayisa is one of the few single-farmer coffee lots from the Guji highlands of Ethiopia that ever make it to the market. In the cup, it reveals notes of sweet peach rings (peach jelly), raspberry, and a subtle hint of white tea—a profile that is delicate yet full of character.
Buku Sayisa is one of the highest-altitude coffee-growing regions in Ethiopia, where farms scattered across the highlands reach up to 2, 350 meters above sea level, creating exceptional conditions for growing the highest-quality coffee. Esayas Beriso began his career working in a government office in Dimtu, where, together with his brothers, he started collecting and selling coffee cherries from local farmers to washing stations. As his business grew, Esayas began planting his own trees, and in 2009 he left his government job to devote himself fully to coffee. Today, it is a family business where his wife, Meskerem, oversees the harvest on their own farm and the purchase of cherries from neighboring growers.
The variety grown here falls under the “Landrace” designation, an umbrella term for dozens of coffee varieties that are so characteristic of Ethiopia—the cradle of coffee—that single-origin lots from this region remain a rarity.
The coffee undergoes washed processing. The cherries are harvested by hand at the peak of ripeness and then sorted by hand and pulped. This is followed by fermentation in water lasting up to 72 hours, after which the beans are washed and sorted by density, with only the highest-quality beans proceeding to processing. After a brief soak in water, the beans are dried in a thin layer for ten days and finally sorted by hand once more to ensure the highest quality of each batch.