LAS GALAXIAS - COPA DE ORO

About This Coffee

Caturra was one of our favorite varieties over a decade ago, but it has become increasingly difficult to find. We were glad to discover this exciting lot through this year’s Copa de Oro competition. In the cup we find green papaya, pomegranate, and citrus. Of all the places in Colombia, Tarqui has produced the best Caturra we have tasted in the last five years. There are likely many contributing factors—some still unknown to us—but a few stand out. The region’s unique microclimate brings extremely cold nights and warm days, and the remoteness of these farms makes them difficult to access. We believe this isolation may be helping preserve the integrity of Caturra genetics over time. Caturra is a natural mutation of the Bourbon variety. It was discovered on a plantation in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil sometime between 1915 and 1918. Today, it is one of the most economically important coffees in Central America, to the extent that it is often used as a benchmark against which new cultivars are tested. In Colombia, Caturra was thought to represent nearly half of the country’s production before a government-sponsored program beginning in 2008 incentivized renovation of over three billion coffee trees with the leaf rust resistant Castillo variety (which has Caturra parentage).