A coffee variety is a type of coffee tree, in the same way that Granny Smith and Pink Lady are types of apple tree. They're all the same species, they all produce coffee fruit/cherries, and they taste startlingly different. Variety is one of the five things on our bags, and it's the one most people focus a little extra on alongside processing. Here's what it means, where the famous names came from, and which ones are worth looking for.
Species, variety, cultivar, varietal
Four words, often used interchangeably, and worth untangling once.
- Species is the big division. Nearly all specialty coffee is arabica. The other commercial species is robusta, which is hardier, higher in caffeine and mostly used in instant coffee and cheap blends.
- Variety is a sub-type within the species: Bourbon, Caturra, SL28, Geisha, Sidra to name a few. Some occurred naturally, some were developed as crossbreeds or selected as new strains by laboratories in the producing countries.
- Cultivar is the technically correct word for a variety that only exists because people cultivated it. Most of the names below are really cultivars.
- Varietal is, strictly, an adjective borrowed from wine. It's everywhere in coffee, and it isn't worth arguing about.
Why arabica has so few varieties to begin with
Arabica is a young, accidental species. It came from a single natural cross between two other coffee species somewhere around what is now Ethiopia and South Sudan, and every arabica tree on earth descends from that one event. That gives arabica less genetic variation than almost any other major crop.
Then it got narrower still. Coffee left Ethiopia for Yemen, and from Yemen only a handful of plants travelled onward: essentially one lineage to Indonesia and the Americas, which we call Typica, and one to the island of Réunion, then called Bourbon. Nearly all coffee grown outside Ethiopia descends from those two.
That narrow base is why coffee leaf rust has been so devastating. It's also why Ethiopian coffee, sitting on the whole original gene pool, tastes like nothing else.
Typica, Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai: the old coffee varieties
Typica and Bourbon are the parents of most of the coffee world. Both are low-yielding and disease-prone, and both are prized for sweetness and clarity. We've roasted Typica from Monte Copey in Costa Rica (spelt Tipica on the bag), and Red Bourbon from Santa Rosa 1900.
Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, found in Brazil in the early 1900s and selected in the 1930s. Short trees are easier to pick and can be planted more densely, so Caturra spread across Latin America. It keeps most of Bourbon's sweetness. Sandra and Hector's Caturra at Finca El Porvenir is the coffee we roast for both filter and espresso.
Catuai is a Caturra crossed with Mundo Novo, bred in Brazil for yield and sturdiness. It's one of the varieties that Enrique and his family grow at Monte Copey, and honey-processed Yellow Catuai from them is one of the sweetest coffees we buy.
SL28 and SL34: Kenya's SL varieties
If you've ever wondered why Kenyan coffee tastes of blackcurrant, the answer is partly thanks to a colonial-era research station.
Scott Agricultural Laboratories near Nairobi spent the 1930s testing dozens of coffee trees for yield, disease resistance and cup quality, labelling each selection with the initials SL and a number. In 1935 they picked one tree from a drought-tolerant population brought from Tanganyika. That tree became SL28, and ninety years later it's still one of the most celebrated varieties in Africa — low-yielding, deep-rooted, remarkably long-lived, and responsible for that intense blackcurrant acidity. SL34, selected for wetter conditions, usually grows alongside it.
Both are part of the Kenyan lots we buy, including Thunguri AA from Kirinyaga. And because a good variety travels, we've also bought SL28 grown in Costa Rica, at Santa Rosa 1900 and La Lia — the same genetics with a completely different flavour profile.
Castillo, Variedad Colombia, Tabi: the rust-resistant hybrids
In 1927 a natural hybrid of arabica and robusta was found on the island of Timor. It wasn't much of a coffee, but it carried robusta's resistance to coffee leaf rust, and breeders have been working with it ever since.
Colombia's research institute, Cenicafé, crossed it with Caturra to create a line called Catimor, and from that released Variedad Colombia in 1982 — just in time for rust to reach the country in 1983. Twenty-three more years of backcrossing produced Castillo, released in 2005, three years before the epidemic that flattened Colombia's harvests. Tabi came from the same programme, crossing the Timor hybrid back into Typica and Bourbon. Kenya's equivalents are Ruiru 11 and Batian, which is why both turn up on Kenyan bags next to the SLs.
These varieties have a bad reputation in specialty circles, and it's mostly out of date. The early Catimors did cup poorly. The later generations, grown well and picked ripe, can be excellent — we've bought both Tabi and Variedad Colombia from farms we trust. More to the point, they're the reason many farms still exist. A variety that survives the disease is worth more than one that tastes marginally better and dies.
What does "heirloom" mean on Ethiopian coffee?
Ethiopian bags often say "heirloom", "landrace" or "mixed heirloom", and that isn't evasion. Ethiopia has thousands of local coffee types, many of them undocumented, growing in gardens and forests alongside named regional selections such as Kurume, Wolisho and Dega. A single washing station may collect cherries from hundreds of smallholders and dozens of genetic types.
The result is a complexity nobody bred for. The coffees we buy from Gedeb in Yirgacheffe — Chelchele and Halo — are the clearest example of what that gene pool can do.
Geisha, Pacamara, Sidra and Pink Bourbon
Geisha (or Gesha) is an Ethiopian landrace collected near the town of Gesha in the 1930s and sent around the world as a rust-resistance candidate. It was largely ignored until a Panamanian farm entered it in a competition in 2004, and it has broken auction records ever since. Jasmine, bergamot, peach; low yield; extremely expensive. We buy small Geisha lots most years, from Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala.
Pacamara is a Salvadoran cross of Pacas and the giant-seeded Maragogype, made in the 1950s. Enormous seeds and a wild, herbal, fruity cup that divides people. We've bought it from Los Pirineos in El Salvador and Las Moritas in Guatemala.
Sidra emerged in Ecuador, though its parentage is still argued about, and has spread into Colombia. A clean floral profile somewhere between Bourbon and Geisha.
Pink Bourbon is the one with the best story. It ripens pink, it tastes floral and intense, and despite the name it isn't a Bourbon at all. DNA testing in 2017, and again in 2023 by Christophe Montagnon's team with Cafe Imports, found it to be an Ethiopian landrace. The name stuck anyway. It's worth its own article: what is Pink Bourbon coffee? →
Does coffee variety matter more than processing?
They aren't really in competition. Variety sets the range of flavours a coffee could have. Processing decides which part of that range you get, and altitude and farming decide how much sweetness there is to work with. Roasting can only preserve or destroy what arrived. A Geisha processed carelessly is a waste of money; an honest Caturra, picked ripe and dried well, is a genuinely lovely cup.
What variety does give you is a way to navigate. Once you know you like SL28, you've got a thread to pull on across three continents.
Common questions
What is the difference between arabica and robusta?
Different species. Arabica grows higher, yields less, has about a quarter of the caffeine and nearly all the flavour worth talking about. Robusta is tougher and cheaper and mostly ends up in instant coffee and supermarket blends. Everything we roast is arabica.
What does varietal mean?
The same as variety, borrowed from wine. Strictly it's an adjective — a varietal wine is made from one grape variety — but in coffee the two words are used interchangeably.
Which coffee variety tastes best?
The honest answer is: the one grown and processed best. Geisha and Pink Bourbon are the most aromatic, SL28 the most intense, Bourbon and Typica the most classically sweet and floral. But a well-grown Caturra beats a badly grown Geisha every time.
The coffee varieties we're roasting now
We buy by farm rather than by variety, so what's on the shelf changes through the year. Right now that includes Pink Bourbon and Tabi from Finca El Porvenir in Huila, and SL28 and SL34 from Kirinyaga in Kenya. Geisha, Pacamara, Sidra and the Ethiopian landraces come and go with the harvests. See what's in stock among our filter coffees →