Addis Coffee Cup #1
The first stop of the rotation, hosted by the Embassy of Japan — a market that buys on cup score and pays for consistency.
Why this one is on the calendar.
Japan reads Ethiopian coffee through the cup, not the paperwork, and its buyers hold specification longer than most. Opening the rotation there sets the standard the following stops are measured against. The room is deliberately wider than the coffee trade. Alongside exporters, unions and cooperatives sit the host embassy’s economic team, development financiers, agri-tech founders, and buyers who came to taste rather than to be pitched. That mix is the point: a lot that clears at auction in front of an ambassador travels differently to one that clears in a warehouse.
This event has taken place; the page above is the record of how it ran. The calendar carries what is still ahead.