Specialty Coffee Wiki

JARC 74158

Properties3
descriptionThe numbered Ethiopian cultivar released by the Jimma Agricultural Research Center in 1979 — and the plant behind Ethiopia's record-setting Cup of Excellence lots, including the highest COE auction price ever paid.
tagsvariety, ethiopia, sidama, bensa, guji, jarc, africa
aliases74158, Ethiopian 74158, Ethiopia local variety 74158

19 min read

JARC 74158

JARC 74158 is a coffee plant with a filing number instead of a name. It was selected and released by Ethiopia’s Jimma Agricultural Research Center — JARC — and it is the variety that keeps appearing on the highest-scoring Ethiopian coffees of the past decade, including Basha Bekele’s 2024 lot that sold for $445 a pound, the most ever paid at a Cup of Excellence auction anywhere.

If you have ever bought a bag of Ethiopian coffee labelled simply “74158”, this is it.12 The label looks like a barcode because it is one: a government research centre catalogued the plant, and the number stuck.

That matters more than it sounds. Most Ethiopian coffee is sold as “heirloom” — trade shorthand for a mix of local types nobody has identified. A bag that says 74158 is making a much stronger claim: this is one known, named, deliberately propagated plant, and somebody kept it separate all the way from the tree to the sack. See Sidama for why that separation is the whole game in Ethiopia.

Where it came from

Everything in this paragraph is quoted from a roaster’s lot description that was fetched and read directly:3

  • The Jimma Agricultural Research Centre (JARC), “one of Ethiopia’s federal agricultural research centers,” approved the release of 74158 in 1979.
  • The plant “originally came out of the Metu Bishari Selections taken from mother plants from the Metu woreda (district) of the Illuababora zone” — forest material from southwestern Ethiopia, several hundred kilometres from the Sidama highlands where the famous lots now come from.
  • It “was selected and propagated for its high yield potential and resistance to coffee berry disease” — a fungal rot that blackens the fruit on the branch while it is still growing, and the single biggest threat to an Ethiopian coffee crop.

So the plant was not bred for flavour. It was bred to survive and produce, in a country that needed volume, and its reputation as a competition winner arrived forty-odd years later as a side effect.

The identical three claims — 1979, Metu Bishari, yield-and-disease — appear word for word on a second September Coffee lot page, for a different producer.4 That is one roaster reusing its own boilerplate, not two witnesses, so it does not raise the evidence level — but it does show the account is the roaster’s settled house position rather than a one-off.

To verify

A different source dates the variety twenty years later. An Ethiopian coffee-trade site groups 74158 with “additional selections emphasising disease resistance and regional adaptation” developed in the 1980s–1990s, and places 74110 and 74112 in the earlier wave instead.5 That cannot both be true and match the 1979 release date above. The same page independently confirms the uncontested part — that JARC sits inside the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and began systematic selection work in the 1970s. Until a JARC or EIAR bulletin is located, treat the release year as approximately 1979, contested.

To verify

How the seed is actually distributed. One technical page states that JARC material reaches farmers through EIAR licensing agreements with certified cooperatives or via Ethiopia’s Direct Trade Framework rather than open commodity channels, and advises buyers to ask for lot codes carrying JARC nursery numbers plus an agronomic dossier.6 No EIAR directive was located to confirm any of this, and the described mechanism is generic enough to be a plausible guess. Not stated as fact.

To verify

The other traits attributed to it. One specialty site states that 74158 was selected for cup quality and nematode resistance (tiny root-attacking soil worms), that its sibling 74110 is a rust-resistant line from Illubabor forest material, that 74112 is compact and early-maturing, and that JARC keeps “over 450 accessions catalogued since 1970”. None of this is contradicted anywhere consulted, and it fits JARC’s known role — but it is a single commercial-content source with no institutional document behind it, and it disagrees in emphasis with September Coffee’s “high yield and coffee berry disease” framing above. Do not quote the accession count or the nematode claim as fact.

To verify

What the number actually means, and when the plant was collected. A German roaster’s product page states that 74158 was “introduced to Ethiopia in 1971” and decodes the number as “74 (years that the coffee seeds were collected) and 158 (varietal number)”.7 This cannot all be right at once: seeds collected in 1974 cannot have been introduced in 1971, and neither date sits comfortably with JARC’s documented 1979 release. The 74-means-1974 reading is widely repeated in the trade and is probably close to the truth, but no primary JARC or EIAR bulletin was located to confirm it. Treat the decoding as folk knowledge and the 1971 date as unsupported.

To verify

The nickname “Walega.” The research behind this note cites a roaster journal claiming 74158 is “also known locally as Walega” and is grown mainly in Gera, Jimma and Metu at 1,800–2,350 m.8 The page could not be read here, the nickname appears in no other source consulted, and Wollega is separately the name of an Ethiopian zone — which is exactly how a place name gets mistaken for a variety name. Not stated as fact.

To verify

No entry in the industry variety catalogue. World Coffee Research’s variety database is the reference this wiki uses for SL28, Bourbon, Timor Hybrid and the rest. Its record for 74158 was at the same URL pattern that works for every other variety here and returned HTTP 404, as did the catalogue index. That is not proof the variety is absent — the page slug may differ — but it does mean no agronomic data on this page comes from WCR. Everything below is sourced from competition records and roasters.

Why it is famous: the competition record

This is the part that does not depend on roaster copy. Ethiopia’s Cup of Excellence results are published by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, and 74158 is all over them.

YearProducerRankScoreProcessHeadline price
12020Assefa Dukamo Korma (Daye Bensa, Gatta Farm)789.21Natural$23.10/lb
22021Tamiru Tadesse Tesema (Alo Coffee)590.10Natural$26.40/lb
32021Assefa Dukale Wakayo Coffee Supplier3087.38Anaerobic natural—
42021Faysel Abdosh YonisNational Winner87.26Natural—
52022Legese Botosa Dikale (Sidama)190.69—$400.50/lb
62022Bukato Duge Bale490.17——
72022Samuel Zerihun Belachew590.08——
82022Muluneh Tute Galcho889.56——
92022Legese Rowa Dasso (Sidama)1588.31Natural—
102024Basha Bekele190.50Natural$445.00/lb

Sources: Cup of Excellence — Ethiopia 2021 and ACE farm directory — 89.21; the 2022 rows via ACE — Ethiopia 2022 and confirmed via WebFetch, with the winning price as recorded on Cup of Excellence records by country; the 2024 row via ACE — Ethiopia 2024 as recorded on Basha Bekele.9101112 Every one of these lots is from Bensa woreda in Sidama except where noted.

Three observations worth holding onto:

It does not just win, it crowds the table. In 2022 alone, 74158 took first, fourth, fifth, eighth and fifteenth place. And the plants that took the places in between were its siblings: second went to 74112, third and seventh to 74110, sixth to 74165. The entire published top eight of a national competition was numbered JARC material. Whatever else is true about Ethiopian coffee, the country’s competition circuit runs on a handful of 1970s research-station selections rather than on landrace luck.

The year before, the same thing happened one rung lower. Ethiopia’s published 2021 order ran 74165 first (twice, as a split lot), 74110 second (also split), Typica third, 74112 fourth, 74158 fifth, then 74112 again at sixth and seventh.10 Six of the seven were numbered JARC material, and the one that was not is the oldest cultivated arabica there is. Which gives the honest answer to the question this note is often asked — does 74158 dominate Ethiopian competition lots? JARC selections dominate. 74158 is the most valuable of them by a wide margin, but it is not always the highest-placed.

It wins as a natural. Four of the five rows above were dried whole in the cherry rather than washed — see Natural process. Ethiopia spent a century known for washed coffee; its 74158 record run is almost entirely fruit-dried.

It is not Geisha. The variety that dominates the top of the auction market in Panama, Colombia and beyond has no part in Ethiopia’s record run. The plant holding the all-time Cup of Excellence price record is a 1970s government yield-and-disease selection, which is roughly the opposite of a boutique variety.

One correction worth making loudly. Roaster pages selling Alo Coffee’s washed Alo Village 74158 credit the farm with first place in the 2021 Ethiopian Cup of Excellence.13 The farm did win it — but not with this plant. The official results list the 2021 champion lot as variety 74165, anaerobic, scoring 90.60; Tamiru Tadesse’s 74158 was the separate rank-5 coffee at 90.10, natural.10 Same farmer, same woreda, same year, different variety. A bag of Alo 74158 is a fifth-place coffee’s variety wearing a first-place farm’s laurels — and that slippage, from this farm won to this bean won, is the most common way a competition record gets overstated on a retail page.

To verify

The exact wording of that roaster claim. The product page carrying it returned HTTP 429 to every attempt made here and could not be read, so the phrasing above comes from the research report behind this pass rather than from the page itself.13 The correction does not depend on it: the 2021 variety-and-process listing, lot by lot, was read directly from the official Cup of Excellence results page.10

The one Ethiopian record 74158 does not hold is the private-auction high. That belongs to Alo Coffee’s Echoes of the Peak sale at US$1,739/kg in 2025 — reported as 74158 grown at 2,400–2,580 m, though that identification comes from news coverage rather than an official lot sheet.14

To verify

A research pass behind this note concluded the opposite. The automated research report used to update this page states that it found no Cup of Excellence, ACE or national auction result naming 74158, and that no competition placement could be credibly claimed for it. That is flatly contradicted by the table above, every row of which comes from a page on the official Alliance for Coffee Excellence or Cup of Excellence site that was fetched and read directly. The table stands; the report’s negative finding is recorded here only so nobody re-derives it and “corrects” the page.

And a second pass reached the same wrong conclusion. A later automated report likewise found no competition evidence and could not tell whether 74158 “dominates” anything. Both passes failed the same way: they searched roaster and retail pages, which mention competitions loosely and varieties prominently, instead of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence results archive, which publishes variety per lot. Anyone revisiting this note should start at the official results pages listed below, not at a search engine.

Where it is grown

74158 started in the southwest and travelled east. Documented plantings:

PlaceAltitudeWhoSource quality
1Bombe, Bensa, Sidama2,250 mBasha Bekele & Bekele BelaychoRoaster page, fetched
2Chilaka, Bensa2,320–2,400 mTamiru Tadesse (Alo Coffee)Roaster page, not fetched
3Chire, Sidama1,920 m— (semi-forest system)Single low-authority source
4Boku, Hambela Wamena, Guji, Oromia2,350 mEsayas Beriso, Boku Abel StationRoaster page, fetched
5Uddo Hadammaa, Shakiso, Guji~2,100 m~23 farmers via Suke Drying StationSocial-media post15
6Murago, Sidama2,350 mBekele Kachara, with his eldest son Belaye running the drying stationRoaster page, fetched

The pattern is consistent even if individual figures are not: this is a high-altitude specialty plant in practice, sitting between roughly 1,900 and 2,600 metres, and it has spread well beyond the Jimma and Illuababora country it was selected in. The Bensa and Guji plantings are where the money is.

To verify

Whether the Bombe producer is the Basha Bekele. The washed lot in the first row is credited to “Basha Bekele & Bekele Belaycho” in Bombe, Bensa, Sidama — the same name, same woreda and same variety as this wiki’s Basha Bekele, the 2024 Cup of Excellence winner. It is very likely the same farmer, but the roaster page does not mention the COE win, the competition lot was natural rather than washed, and Basha and Bekele are both common Ethiopian names. Treated here as a separate documented planting, not as confirmed to be his.

Note the “semi-forest system” in the Chire row. In Ethiopia coffee is commonly grown under thinned natural forest canopy rather than on cleared planted land — a management style with no real equivalent in Latin America.

To verify

A competition claim attached to the Murago farm that the official record does not support. The roaster selling Bekele Kachara’s 74158 describes him as a producer “whose farm in Murago at 2350 meters produced the 15th place Cup of Excellence coffee in 2022”. The official 2022 Ethiopia results were checked directly: 15th place is Legese Rowa Dasso, Sidama, 88.31, natural — and neither “Bekele Kachara” nor “Murago” appears anywhere in the results, auction list or jury listing. There is an ordinary explanation — Ethiopian competition lots are frequently submitted under the name of the washing station or exporter that assembled them, not the farmer who grew the cherry — but as written the claim does not match the record. The planting itself is not in doubt; the placing is.

To verify

A smallholder planting in Bombe, Bensa. An importer info sheet cited in the research behind this note describes a naturally processed 74158 from Bombe in Bensa, grown by smallholders at 1,950–2,150 m, hand-sorted and dried on raised beds, harvested November to February, cupping as apricot, raspberry and vanilla. The document is a scanned info sheet on a file-sharing site and was not fetched here.16 The altitude band is notably lower than the 2,250–2,400 m reported for the famous Bensa lots, and the harvest window is the only piece of seasonal information anywhere in this note — both would be useful if confirmed, and neither is confirmed.

How it gets processed

There is no house style. Roasters have sold 74158 processed in at least four ways:

  • Natural — the whole cherry dried around the bean. This is what every top competition lot above used. At Boku Abel Station in Guji the cherries are “dry-fermented on raised beds,” turned through the day, covered during the hottest hours and at night, drying in 7–10 days. Bekele Kachara’s Murago lot was dried far more slowly — 18 days on raised covered beds, shaded at the peak of the sun. Same variety, same process name, and more than double the drying time: worth remembering before treating “natural” as a specification.
  • Washed, with a cultured yeast — the Bombe/Bensa lot was hand-picked, floated, hand-pulped, then fermented under clean water with Lalcafe INTENSO yeast for 48 hours in shade, mixed every 12 hours, and dried on raised beds under shade for 25 days. Adding a commercial yeast strain is a deliberate steering of the fermentation rather than letting whatever is on the fruit take over.
  • Hybrid wash and “mosto” anaerobic natural — both sold under those labels by roasters, with no protocol published.

To verify

The two experimental labels. “Hybrid wash” and “Mosto Anaerobic Natural”1718 are marketing terms on product pages, neither fetched here. Mosto normally means fermenting juice, which suggests the cherry is dried with recirculated fruit liquid, but no time, temperature or additive is stated by either seller. The label is the only verifiable part. See Anaerobic fermentation for what these terms usually cover.

What it tastes like

The strongest sensory evidence is the competition record, not a variety profile. The Alliance for Coffee Excellence jury notes on the 2020 Gatta Farm 74158 lot run to lemon-lime, lychee, quince, guava, papaya, cinnamon, orange, prune, blueberry and dulce de leche.

The washed yeast-fermented Bensa lot is described by its roaster as an “intense aroma of nectarines and florals,” with “intense sweetness of juicy peaches and bright tropical and lemon-lime citric acidity”.

The Murago natural goes somewhere else again: its roaster calls it “juicy berries like raspberry and strawberry and a very distinct blue slushie sweetness,” round-bodied with a long finish. Blue slushie is not a cupping term — it is a roaster reaching for the specific artificial-blue-raspberry sweetness that long-dried Ethiopian naturals sometimes produce.

Read all of this as what these particular lots did, not as a fixed varietal signature. Processing, altitude and drying discipline move an Ethiopian cup at least as much as the plant does — which is exactly why the same variety shows up as blueberry-and-dulce-de-leche in one column and nectarine-and-lemon-lime in another. On how these judgements are produced, see Cupping and Coffee scoring.

To verify

The one published cupping score outside competition. A 74158 lot grown at 1,920 m in Chire is reported as scoring 85.2 points under SCAA protocol (2023) with notes of “stewed plum, black tea tannin, and cedar resin”. The same page puts sibling 74110 at 86.5 in what reads as a lab or quality-control cupping rather than a public competition. No cupping form, competition, or cupper is named, and the page is a single commercial source. Not a verifiable score — and note that the official 2022 results above have 74158 beating 74110 by a wide margin, which is the reverse ranking.

To verify

Retail prices. The research behind this note recorded a Guji 74158 microlot at €17.75 per 250 g (≈€88.75/kg). The product page was fetched and showed the item sold out with the price displayed as €0.00, so the figure could not be confirmed. No farm-gate, FOB or export price for 74158 was found in any source. The auction figures in the table above are competition prices — one determined bidder, one small bag — and say nothing about what an ordinary 74158 lot is worth. See Premiumisation.

Why it matters

74158 is the clearest case in this wiki of a utility plant that turned out to be a great one. It was released to help Ethiopian farmers survive coffee berry disease and pick more cherry. Nobody selected it to win auctions. Four decades later it has won Ethiopia’s national Cup of Excellence outright in both 2022 and 2024, it is the variety underneath the highest price the competition has ever recorded anywhere, and it is one of a small handful of named Ethiopian plants that buyers now ask for by number.

It also quietly undermines the usual story about famous varieties. Geisha is a rare plant with a rediscovery legend attached. 74158 is a serial number from a government research station, planted by smallholders on two-hectare plots, and it beat the field.

Footnotes

  1. The Bean Geek — JARC 74158 coffee variety ↩

  2. Sweet Maria’s — Ethiopia varieties glossary ↩

  3. September Coffee — Basha Bekele & Bekele Belaycho, Ethiopia ↩

  4. September Coffee — Bekele Kachara, Ethiopia ↩

  5. EthioCoffee — Ethiopian heirloom coffee varieties and landraces ↩

  6. Bean Brew Digest — Ethiopia Jimma research station varieties ↩

  7. Lucky Cat Coffee — JARC 74158, Esayas Beriso, Boku Hambela Guji ↩

  8. Xliii Coffee — What is coffee variety 74158? ↩

  9. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Ethiopia 2022 results and auction ↩

  10. Cup of Excellence — Ethiopia 2021 official results ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  11. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory entry 89.21, Daye Bensa Gatta Farm ↩

  12. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Ethiopia 2024 results and auction ↩

  13. Headlands Coffee — Ethiopia Alo Village, JARC 74158, classic washed — source of the “1st place, 2021 Ethiopian Cup of Excellence” claim attached to a 74158 lot; returned HTTP 429 here and could not be read ↩ ↩2

  14. Addis Insight — Ethiopian coffee hits $1,739 per kilo in record-breaking auction ↩

  15. Sookoo Coffee / Suke Drying Station — JARC 74158, 74110 & 74112 (Instagram) ↩

  16. Scribd — Ethiopia Sidamo info sheet (natural 74158, Bombe/Bensa) ↩

  17. Hyunah Coffee — Alo Chilaka, JARC 74158, hybrid wash ↩

  18. Cool Beans — ROSE, Alo mosto anaerobic natural ↩

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