Sidama Zone · Medium-Light Roast · 1,700–1,900 MASL · Full Natural · Heirloom Sidamo Cultivars
Dave sat in Mr. Lee's chair as a client, fell for old-fashioned barbering, and went and became one himself. He found the original and devoted himself to it. So did this bean. Coffee wasn't invented in Ethiopia — it was discovered here, growing wild in these highlands centuries before anyone thought to put a price on it. So when we named a coffee for the master barber's chair, the seat you only earn by knowing the work better than anyone in the room, this is the one that gets it. Everything else in the world of coffee came after. Everyone's been chasing it ever since.
What's in the bag isn't a named, bred, uniform variety like the rest of the catalog. It's a wild pool of thousands of indigenous heirloom plants — the deepest reservoir of coffee genetics on earth, the library every other origin borrows from. That's where the perfume comes from: ripe berry up top, caramel underneath, vanilla through the middle, and a floral finish that doesn't fade as the cup cools — it opens. We roast it medium-light on purpose, because going dark would bury the very thing that makes it the First Chair.
This is the origin of the entire tradition, dried whole-cherry on raised beds the way it's been done for a thousand years. Drink it black. Give it room. You're not drinking a coffee modeled on the original. You're drinking the original — the same way Dave didn't copy the trade, he went and lived it.
Roasted in small batches after you order. Never before.
Want the whole story — the soil, the altitude, the science behind the cup? Read the full terroir breakdown deep dive.
