Understanding coffee Varietals.

  Seeing a name like Merlot or Pinot Noir is commonplace in the world of wine. But did you know these aren’t fancy names assigned at random, it refers to the variety of grape used to make the wine. Both are types of wine obviously, but the key differences comes to how they look and taste. Let’s look at coffee in a similar way. Or, think of it this way.. your favorite band, is your favorite brand of coffee. Each album is a region and each song is a varietal. 

In coffee, the variety (or varietal) tells you what type of coffee cherry the beans come from. If you see Caturra, Heirloom or Topazio written on your bag of coffee, it means it’s one variety from the few thousands of coffee varietals found around the world.

With the launch of our new Caturra coffee, we thought we would do a deep dive into this varietal and what it means to be Caturra. This can be useful to you, as the drinker. Soon, you will soon realize that each variety has its own unique attributes that distinguish one from the other.

In Brazil, a mutation of the bourbon plant-which has roots going back to an island off the coast of Africa called Bourbon-resulted in a smaller, and even more productive version of this coffee tree. It was planted just outside of the town of Caturra, Brazil, hence the variety was given this name. It was an easy decision for farmers needing a good go-to plant with it’s higher productivity and compact size.

The number of coffee varietals is astonishing and Caturra is but one. There are literally thousands of coffee varietals in Ethiopia alone. Which is the best? We can’t say for sure..but we are up for testing them all.