Close

Catimor

Its ages since I did a new varietal post, but with this weeks in my mug being a catimor I thought it was about time I did.

Catimors one of the unloved bad guys of coffee, but I’ve found a couple of examples of it being quite the oposite. I guess this comes back ot there is no such thing as a badf varietal, just a varietal planted in a bad space. A geisha planted at 1100 masl is going to be awful and I guess there must be rules for Catimors.

Any way you can read up about all our varietals here or just read about catimor below

Varietal: Catimor

Related to: Caturra and Timor

Origin: Portugal

Grows best at: Above 500 masl and below 1500 metres

Type: Hybrid

Prevalent in: Central south america and asia

Predominant Colour: Red

Fruit size: Normal rounded

Leaf Characteristics: Large and wide

Botany: Hybrid

Special Notes:

A controversial coffee varietal. Catimor is a cross between Timor coffee (resistant to leaf rust a big problem at the moment in central America) and Caturra coffee. It was created in of all places Portugal in 1959.

It grows and produces fruit very quickly and has a very high yields, pest resistant and leaf rust resistant and will grow at much lower altitudes well in comparison to to many other commercial varietals, although very low or very high it has been reported that it can be problematic.

Sounds perfect, but problems come in the cup quality. Timor has its feet in the robusta species (hence all these lovely benefits) but robusta is not known for being tasty. Also because of its over eagerness to produce fruit, the productive life span of the Catimor is reduced significantly with some producers reporting severe drop offs in production after 10 years or so.

Links: Cattura, Timor, IHCAFE 90, IHCAFE 95

Examples: El Salvador Finca Argentina Timor, Tanzania Burka Block A Catimor Natural

About the author Just Steve Leighton

I'm just Steve Leighton

All posts by Just Steve Leighton →

One Comment

  1. Funny I came across this blog. I work here in Southern Yunnan, China. The predominant variety grown here is Catimor, and just about two years ago, it began receiving SCAA Specialty scores. Still a long way to go to improve it, but so much of quality comes from soil, maintenance, elevation, etc. Great to run across more info about Catimor!

Comments are closed.