Catimor Coffee Beans

Catimor divides opinion in the cup. Grown low and rushed, it can turn earthy and rubbery, the Robusta in its genes showing through. Grown above 1,000 metres and processed with care, it does the opposite: spice, dark fruit, nutmeg, a rounded finish. Producers in Vietnam's Lâm Đồng province and high-altitude farms across Central America are proving the second version isn't the exception.

The genetics explain the split. Catimor is a group of hybrid cultivars bred at Portugal's CIFC research station in 1959, crossing Caturra with the Timor Hybrid, a natural cross of Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora found in East Timor in 1927. The Timor Hybrid carries Robusta genes that defend hard against coffee leaf rust, and as rust spread through the Americas from the 1970s, breeding that resistance into a compact, high-yielding plant became urgent. Every producing country ran its own selection from the original cross: Costa Rica 95, Lempira in Honduras, Catisic in El Salvador, Ateng in Indonesia. Few varietal groups have this many regional versions.

Catimor's reach goes further than its own cup. It sits behind Colombia's Castillo and a run of F1 hybrids built to pair its disease resistance with better flavour.

Read more: Our Catimor varietal guide · Caturra · Bourbon · All varietal guides