If you’ve spent any time looking at specialty coffee bags, you’ve probably noticed words like Bourbon, Caturra, or Gesha listed alongside origin and processing method. These are coffee varietals—and understanding them can open up a whole new way of thinking about what’s in your cup.
Think of varietals like apple varieties. Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, and Fuji are all apples, but they taste completely different. Coffee works the same way. Different varietals produce different flavors, and once you know what to look for, you can start to connect the dots between what’s on the bag and what ends up in your mug.
This guide covers the basics: what varietals actually are, the major ones you’ll encounter, and how to use this information when buying coffee. No jargon overload, no gatekeeping—just the essentials to help you explore.
What Are Coffee Varietals?
A varietal is a genetic variation within a species of coffee plant. Almost all specialty coffee comes from one species: Coffea arabica, commonly called Arabica. Within Arabica, there are dozens of distinct varietals—Bourbon, Typica, Gesha, SL28, and many more—each with its own characteristics.
These differences matter because varietals influence flavor. Some tend toward sweetness and chocolate. Others lean bright and fruity. Some produce delicate florals that seem almost tea-like. The varietal sets the stage for what’s possible in the cup, though growing conditions and processing methods also play major roles.
You might also see the terms “variety” and “cultivar” used interchangeably with varietal. Technically, variety refers to plants that evolved naturally, while cultivar means something humans bred intentionally. In practice, the coffee industry uses these terms loosely. What matters is understanding that different plants produce different results.
A Brief History: How We Got Here
Coffee originated in the forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where thousands of unique varieties still grow wild today. Ethiopia remains the genetic motherland of Arabica—home to an estimated 6,000 to 15,000 distinct indigenous varieties, representing roughly 95% of Arabica’s total genetic diversity.
From Ethiopia, coffee traveled to Yemen around the 15th century, where it was first cultivated commercially. Yemeni authorities protected their monopoly by requiring all exported beans to be roasted—ensuring they couldn’t be planted elsewhere. That control eventually broke down, and coffee spread to India, Java, and eventually the Americas.
Two lineages emerged from this journey that form the foundation of most coffee grown today:
Typica traces back to plants the Dutch sent from Java to Amsterdam in the early 1700s. From there, cuttings traveled to French colonies worldwide. A famous story involves a French naval officer named Gabriel de Clieu, who in 1723 transported coffee seedlings to Martinique, sharing his personal water ration with a surviving plant during a difficult voyage. That single plant became the ancestor of most coffee grown in the Caribbean and Central America.
Bourbon developed separately when the French introduced Yemeni coffee to Bourbon Island (now Réunion) between 1715 and 1718. In isolation, those plants evolved into a distinct variety by the 1770s. French missionaries later spread Bourbon to East Africa and the Americas.
This history created what scientists call a genetic bottleneck. A small number of trees taken from Yemen centuries ago form the basis of virtually all commercial Arabica production. That limited diversity is why coffee is so vulnerable to disease—and why breeding programs today work to expand the gene pool.
The Heritage Varietals
These are the classic varietals that shaped specialty coffee. They’re prized for exceptional cup quality, though they often produce lower yields and can be susceptible to diseases.
Typica
Typica represents one of the purest connections to coffee’s origins. It’s a tall, elegant plant that produces relatively low yields but exceptional clarity in the cup.
What to expect: Clean, sweet, and balanced. At higher altitudes, you’ll often find citrus notes alongside honey, caramel, and delicate acidity. Typica rewards careful attention during roasting and brewing.
Where it grows: While largely replaced by higher-yielding varieties in most regions, Typica thrives in Jamaica (Blue Mountain), Peru, Hawaii’s Kona region, and specialty farms throughout Central America.
Bourbon
If Typica is one parent of modern coffee, Bourbon is the other. This varietal is beloved in specialty circles for its depth and complexity.
What to expect: Sweet, full-bodied, with notes of chocolate, brown sugar, and fruit. Red Bourbon tends toward darker fruit sweetness, while Yellow Bourbon often shows honey and lighter fruit character.
Where it grows: El Salvador is particularly known for Bourbon, along with Guatemala, Rwanda, and Brazil. Rwanda’s volcanic highlands have grown Bourbon for over a century.
Bourbon has also produced some interesting mutations. Pink Bourbon, despite its name, turned out through genetic testing to be an Ethiopian landrace variety rather than a true Bourbon—it shows distinctive honeysuckle and jasmine notes. Bourbon Pointu (also called Laurina) is a dwarf mutation with naturally low caffeine and a delicate, tea-like character.
Caturra
Discovered as a natural Bourbon mutation on a Brazilian plantation around 1915-1918, Caturra changed how coffee could be grown. A single gene mutation shortened the plant, creating a compact variety that farmers could plant much more densely.
What to expect: Bright citrus acidity, chocolate, caramel, and clean character. It retains much of Bourbon’s quality in a more productive package.
Where it grows: Costa Rica (where it makes up a significant portion of production), Colombia, and throughout Central America. It’s also an important parent in modern breeding programs.
Catuai
Created in Brazil by crossing Caturra with Mundo Novo (itself a natural Typica-Bourbon hybrid), Catuai combines genetics from both parent lineages. It took over 20 years of development before release in 1972.
What to expect: Balanced sweetness, chocolate, caramel, and nutty notes. Both Red and Yellow variants exist.
Where it grows: Catuai is a workhorse variety in Brazil (about half of all production) and dominates in Honduras. It’s also common in Costa Rica and Guatemala.
The Specialty Stars
These varietals command premium prices for their exceptional and distinctive cup profiles.
Gesha (or Geisha)
No varietal has captured the specialty world’s imagination quite like Gesha. Originally from Ethiopia’s Gori Gesha Forest, it traveled an unlikely path through Kenya, Tanzania, and Costa Rica before reaching Panama in the 1960s—where it was valued for rust resistance rather than flavor.
The turning point came at the 2004 Best of Panama competition, when Hacienda La Esmeralda’s Gesha so stunned judges that experienced tasters thought someone had snuck Ethiopian coffee onto the table. Since then, Gesha has set progressively higher auction records, with top lots fetching thousands of dollars per pound.
What to expect: Tea-like body, jasmine florals, bergamot aromatics, tropical fruit, and profound sweetness. It’s unlike anything else in coffee—delicate, complex, and memorable.
Where it grows: Panama remains synonymous with Gesha, but it’s now grown in Colombia, Costa Rica, and other origins. It performs best at very high altitudes with specific microclimates, and produces relatively low yields—factors that keep prices high.
A note on spelling: “Geisha” appeared in original documentation, while “Gesha” more accurately honors the Ethiopian origin. The industry increasingly prefers Gesha.
SL28 and SL34
Developed at Scott Laboratories in Kenya during the 1930s, these two varietals define what people mean when they talk about “Kenyan coffee.” SL28 was selected from drought-tolerant Tanzanian trees, while SL34 came from French Mission Bourbon. Together, they make up the vast majority of Kenyan coffee exports.
What to expect: Bright, wine-like acidity with blackcurrant, raspberry, and citrus notes. Some lots show a savory, almost tomato-like character. Kenya’s unique double fermentation processing (72 hours with multiple washings) enhances these qualities.
Where it grows: Primarily Kenya, though some farms in other East African countries have planted them. The trees can produce for 60-80 years—remarkable longevity.
Pacamara
Created in El Salvador by crossing Pacas (a natural Bourbon mutation) with Maragogipe (the Brazilian “elephant bean”), Pacamara took over 30 years of careful breeding before release.
What to expect: Complex, with deep sweetness, tropical fruit, floral notes, and creamy body. The beans are notably large. Natural and anaerobic processing methods have pushed Pacamara’s potential even further in recent years.
Where it grows: El Salvador remains its home, though it represents only a small percentage of the country’s production due to growing difficulty. It’s become a regular Cup of Excellence winner.
Ethiopian Heirloom: Where It All Began
When you see “Ethiopian Heirloom” on a bag, you’re looking at a catch-all term for Ethiopia’s thousands of indigenous varietals. The sheer diversity—perhaps 6,000 to 15,000 distinct varieties—makes individual identification nearly impossible on a commercial scale.
Ethiopian varieties generally fall into two categories. Landrace varieties like Kurume, Wolisho, and Dega evolved naturally in specific microclimates over generations. JARC varieties (developed by Jimma Agricultural Research Center, established in 1967) are bred selections like 74110 and 74158, developed for disease resistance and yield while maintaining quality.
What to expect: It depends on the region:
**Yirgacheffe** typically shows vibrant florals (jasmine), citrus, stone fruit, and tea-like body
**Sidama** delivers fruity, wine-like complexity with balanced acidity
**Guji** offers pronounced fruit sweetness and vibrant depth
**Harrar** (usually dry-processed) shows bold blueberry, chocolate, and earthy spice
The specialty industry increasingly prefers “landrace” over “heirloom” as more accurate terminology. Either way, Ethiopian coffees offer some of the most diverse and exciting flavors available.
The Modern Hybrids
Climate change and disease pressure have made rust-resistant varietals essential for many farmers. These modern hybrids incorporate disease resistance while working to maintain cup quality.
Castillo
Colombia’s national research center, Cenicafé, spent 23 years developing Castillo before releasing it in 2005. It’s now planted on nearly half of Colombian coffee farms, offering resistance to coffee leaf rust.
The quality question: Castillo has historically faced skepticism in specialty circles. But well-cultivated Castillo can score 88+ points in blind tastings, performing comparably to traditional varieties when farmers apply excellent practices. The notion that hybrid varieties can’t produce great coffee is increasingly outdated.
What to expect: Clean, balanced, with good sweetness and acidity when well-grown and processed.
Catimor and Related Hybrids
The Catimor family traces back to crosses between Caturra and the Timor Hybrid—a spontaneous Arabica-Robusta cross discovered in the 1920s that carries rust-resistance genes. Various Catimor selections are now grown throughout Asia, Central America, and Africa under different local names.
The tradeoff: Early versions could show harsh or muddy flavors due to their Robusta genetics. Modern selections and careful processing have improved cup quality significantly. As one industry expert noted, there’s no such thing as a bad varietal—just varietals planted in unsuitable conditions.
Varietals by Region
Understanding regional patterns helps you anticipate what to expect:
Central America (Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras): Bourbon-family varietals dominate, including Caturra, Catuai, and traditional Bourbon. Gesha has made inroads in Panama. Expect clean, balanced cups with good sweetness.
Colombia: A mix of traditional varietals (Caturra, Typica, Bourbon) and modern rust-resistant varieties (Castillo, Cenicafé 1). The variety of microclimates means Colombia produces an enormous range of flavor profiles.
Brazil: Catuai and Mundo Novo dominate. Natural processing creates characteristic nutty, chocolate, and caramel profiles with lower acidity—different from washed Central American coffees but essential for espresso and blends.
East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi): SL28 and SL34 define Kenya’s character. Rwanda and Burundi grow primarily Bourbon, producing silky, sweet coffees with floral and citrus notes.
Ethiopia: Indigenous heirloom/landrace varieties create unmatched diversity. Regional differences (Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Guji, Harrar) matter as much as specific varietals.
Indonesia: Typica derivatives, Timor Hybrid, and Catimor processed through wet-hulling (giling basah) create distinctive earthy, full-bodied character—completely different from coffees elsewhere.
How to Use Varietal Information
Understanding varietals helps you make informed choices, but context matters. Here’s how to think about it:
What varietals tell you: General flavor tendencies and genetic lineage. Bourbon suggests sweetness and complexity. Gesha signals delicate florals. SL28 implies bright acidity. These tendencies hold across many different lots.
What varietals don’t tell you: Final cup quality depends on many factors. The same Bourbon grown in Rwanda will taste different from Bourbon grown in El Salvador due to terroir, processing, and roasting. A natural-processed coffee will show more fruit character regardless of varietal.
Practical suggestions:
Start with single-origin coffees rather than blends to taste distinct characteristics. If you try a coffee you love, note the varietal—you may find you consistently enjoy coffees from that genetic background.
Compare the same varietal from different origins. Try Bourbon from El Salvador alongside Bourbon from Rwanda to understand how terroir shapes expression.
Pay attention to processing method alongside varietal. Washed, natural, and honey processes all transform the same genetic material in different ways.
Look for detailed labeling. Origin, varietal, processing method, altitude, and producer information all help tell the story of a coffee. The more you know, the better you can connect what’s on the bag to what you’re tasting.
Why This Matters
Varietals represent the starting point for everything that follows—growing, harvesting, processing, roasting, brewing. They’re one piece of a larger puzzle, but an important one.
For coffee drinkers, varietal knowledge offers a framework for exploration. Instead of randomly trying bags, you can develop preferences and make educated guesses about what you might enjoy. You start to recognize patterns: maybe you gravitate toward the complexity of Bourbon, or the brightness of SL28, or the exotic florals of Ethiopian landraces.
For farmers, varietal choice involves difficult tradeoffs between cup quality, disease resistance, yield, and climate adaptation. Supporting specialty coffee means valuing the extra care required to grow exceptional varietals well.
For roasters, varietals influence every sourcing decision. Understanding genetic potential helps identify lots worth pursuing and informs how to roast them.
The specialty coffee world keeps evolving. Breeding programs are developing new hybrids that combine quality with resilience. Researchers are documenting Ethiopia’s genetic diversity before it’s lost. And our understanding of how varietals interact with terroir and processing deepens each year.
Whether you’re drawn to the comforting sweetness of Bourbon, the electric brightness of Kenyan SL varieties, or the mystery of Ethiopian heirlooms, varietals give you vocabulary and direction. The more you pay attention, the more interesting coffee becomes.
Keep Exploring
This overview covers the essentials, but there’s always more to learn. There's always more to explore—processing methods, specific origins, brewing techniques.. In the meantime, the best way to learn is to taste—pay attention to what’s in your cup, note what you enjoy, and follow your curiosity.