Hi, I’m Adanech Mc Kelvie, the Managing Director of Adanech Trading Limited, which operates Abyssinica. I’m originally from Ethiopia, the home of the world’s best coffee, and I’ve been involved with coffee all my life. Some of my family and friends own small coffee farms and processing plants in the Sidamo and Harar areas and I am very happy to be able to help them now by buying their coffee beans, while, at the same time, introducing Europeans to the best coffee that money can buy. I regularly travel to Ethiopia to find the best beans available and establish relationships with the people who work so hard to produce Ethiopia’s main export. This is a joy for me to do because I speak the same language and share the same enthusiasm for coffee culture.

I started roasting coffee as a child, imitating my mother and elder sisters, who performed a coffee ceremony several times a day. Performing this ceremony has remained a lifelong passion with me and I do it every day; even in my new home of Scotland. The Ethiopian coffee ceremony involves roasting and grinding just enough beans to make one pot of coffee which is always brewed in a traditional clay coffee pot called a jibuna. Frankincense is burnt and fresh popcorn is prepared to accompany the coffee. This ritual is performed religiously throughout the length and breadth of Ethiopia on a daily basis, and is as much a feature of Ethiopian life as eating fish and chips and going to the pub is in Britain.

I left Ethiopia 18 years ago and opened an Ethiopian coffee shop, which I ran successfully for 2 years, in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. After that, I moved to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and opened the first ever Ethiopian coffee shop in the city. It was a great success and became such a thriving business that more than 40 Ethiopian coffee shops have sprung up there since, trying to emulate its success.  Marriage later brought me to the United Kingdom where I intend to put my experience to good use by promoting the best high altitude, estate grown Arabica coffee to be found outside of Ethiopia.