The Great Addis Beverage Binge

Highs in the Ethiopian capital don’t end at coffee. Try honey wine in tiny shacks, sip spris in chaotic cafés, and nurse homegrown wines inside trendy bars.

- Bhavya Dore

I never know the answer to the polarising question, am I a coffee person or a tea person, since I am decidedly a coffee-and-tea person. Why this pressure to choose between two A+ beverages? Luckily in Addis Ababa I did not have to. All thanks to the spris.

Combining coffee and tea in one single, potent cup, the spris is bound to send conservative blowhards keeling over in disgust. And I concede, it is not for everyone. But it was certainly for me.

My first spris was at Raizel Cafe, a small enterprise in the centre of Addis Ababa. It arrived in a transparent cup, a dark, sludgy top layer smothering a translucent, lighter brown bulk below. As I drained it, the first hits of chai gave way to a strong undertow of coffee. I was an instant convert.

Ethiopia is not an obvious choice for tourists, a landlocked country once synonymous with global hunger and developing world despair. But Addis Ababa, a city of three million, is aspiring to build itself as a great African city in the continent’s fastest-growing economy. A week later, I was smitten, spris and all.

But I was not a philistine throughout. I also consumed pure Ethiopian coffee repeatedly and enthusiastically during my eight-day trip. The country doesn’t let you forget that this is the birthplace of the coffee bean; legend claims that a shepherd wandering through Kaffa—the region that gives coffee its name— stumbled on caffeinated goats energised on wild beans. Several centuries later caffeinated humans continue to get energised on ground beans.

The local macchiato is a sturdy, flavoursome bolt of caffeine, chocolatey, foamy, richly addictive. Then there is the standard-issue black coffee that arrives in tiny, chai-style glasses, bursting with the burnt deliciousness of fresh roasting. Street-side stalls are common; but one of the best places was Tomoca, a small enterprise with a no-nonsense decor, busy queues and the pungent scent of singed beans.