You Were Reborn in a Buna Cup: Why Ethiopian Coffee Still Reshapes Expectations
Do you remember that first taste?
The rose that opened on your lips?
The kiss of lemon, the grace of jasmine?
The way you realized, suddenly, that you’d missed out on something important for a very long time?
How every cup you had after that was compared to it,
The herby rush,
The aromatic aftertaste.
Your first cup of Ethiopian coffee changed your life forever.
You are not alone.
Ethiopian Coffee: the Soul of Adventure
One of the enduring aspects of coffee is how exploratory it is. It is in itself a journey, and often pushes us to take journeys. Many of us didn’t have much chance of leaving our home town, whether producer or barista or buyer. Familiar enclosures locked us in. Familiar tastes, familiar names, familiar sounds.
I don’t know your story, but it’s a safe bet you are also in love with the adventure of coffee, and that it’s led you to fall in love with Ethiopian coffee just like I have, your customers have, and the entire world pretty much has.
Coffee beckons you to expand your worldview even while confirming the utter comfort of home. In your kitchen, with the curtains fluttering over the sink from the spring breeze, you can savor the essence of the rich red Yirgacheffe soil. With just a touch of imagination you can sink into the sun-drenched coffee fields, intercropped with broad-leaved false banana trees and pulsing with life from the rustling ecosystems at the roots all the way to the ripe brick-colored cherries, plump between your fingers and bursting between your teeth.
Yes, coffee is a trade. But also yes, it is an experience. And Ethiopian coffee—that storied buna once possibly discovered by a goatherd named Kaldi—is an experience that tends to reset and reshape expectations like that little prose poem above reshaped my Sunday morning when I had the privilege of writing it. 
c. 2017 - coffee (buna) in Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Look at the frankincense ash!
Come to Yirgacheffe
Visit Yirgacheffe with me.
Bend your spine to the shape of a car seat for twelve hours. Accept the heat that glistens on your skin, the dust that dances in the breeze. Hear the shouted calls of Ferenji!! Ferenji!! (Foreigner) and feel once again the stab of awareness that your own world, as big as it is, still needs expansion because you probably haven’t grown up chasing tourist cars with hand-carved hippos hoping for a handful of regularly-devalued change to buy necessities with.
Step from the car and catch yourself (luckily) before you break an ankle on the uneven terrain. The sun is a glaring presence you can’t escape. Its life and force non-negotiable on your cheeks and hair. In your nose is the ferocious reek of fermenting coffee pulp. In reality, when combined with the chemicals used to break it down and poured into the river that runs through the heart of the town, it’s so horrific it will bring you nightmares tonight when you sleep.
c. 2016 - Eire McIntyre, Swift Coffee Sourcing CEO Emily McIntyre's child, who grew up context-switching from Portland, Oregon to remote coffee regions around the world. They know exactly the essence of a buna cup.
Yirgacheffe, a study in contrasts.
Ancient and modern rubbing shoulders together.
Poverty and wealth, inescapable.
Excellence and shoddy work co-existing every time a typical coffee is processed and emerges with higher-than-it-should-have chances of quality.
Time is the secret ingredient on those drying tables, the cherries glowing in the never-relenting sun until they wither and promise great things in a cup.
The buna sellers on every corner throughout the country, women crouching over grass mats and brewing traditional-style coffee. Frankincense smoldering below the djebeni pot, floating on the breeze. Take a moment, and feel the bite of the dark-roasted, under-grade coffee on your tongue.
You were reborn in a buna cup.
A coffee professional ever romanced by a coffee origin so great and mysterious that you could spend your life here and never really get below its surface.
A profile your customers will hound you for, a profile you’ll always seek no matter where you go.
Do you remember the first taste of Ethiopian coffee?
I do.
I’m reliving it every day.
Swift’s first Ethiopian coffees land late August/early September 2025.
Yirgacheffe and Guji, well-sourced and well-produced.
Request samples here. And stay tuned for a roaster trip to Ethiopia in 2026!
