How do you end up with 2 coffees from the same farm, on the same hill, from the same producer, picked on the same day and processed exactly the same way, where one tastes like blackberry jam and the other tastes like Earl Grey and jasmine?
The answer is the variety. It is one of the most overlooked words on a bag of coffee, and by the end of this post you will never read a coffee label the same way again.
I'm Zach, founder of Chipp Coffee Co. I've spent over a decade in specialty coffee as a roaster, sensory analyst and consultant. This is the no snobbery guide to what coffee varieties are, where they came from, what they taste like, and a few myths busted along the way.
Prefer to watch? Here is the full video.
Arabica vs Robusta
You will see "100% Arabica" on everything from instant jars to supermarket bags. Here is the first myth to bust: Arabica and Robusta are not varieties. They are species, and inside each species sit lots of different varieties.
Think of it like citrus fruit. Citrus is the big family. Inside it you have lemons, limes and grapefruit, and inside those you have more varieties again.
Arabica is sweeter, with more acidity and a cleaner cup, which is why it is seen as the higher quality of the two. The catch is that it is harder to grow. It needs more care, more water, more fertiliser and more pesticide to stay healthy.
Robusta, or canephora to give it its proper name, is a hardy beast. It grows at low altitude with far less care and has around twice the caffeine of Arabica. That caffeine works as a natural pesticide inside the plant. The downside? Caffeine tastes bitter. A 100% Robusta mega caffeine hit sounds great in theory. I have tried it. It is not.
That said, there is a lot of work going into specialty Robusta now, and some of it tastes really good. It is easier to grow and gives good yields, so with climate change it is one to watch.
So when a bag says "100% Arabica" with no other detail, there is a good chance it is a mix of several Arabica varieties. Robusta usually turns up in classic Italian and French style blends, where 10 to 30% Robusta adds a big, bold, punchy kick.
Mythbusting: Italian coffee
I have genuinely been asked if we roast Italian grown coffee, or if there is an Italian coffee variety. No shade at all, I get where it comes from. Italy has such a rich coffee history, and for a lot of people Italian espresso was their first taste of good coffee.
But Italy does not grow coffee. It is not a producing country. What it has is a brilliant coffee culture and a very distinctive roasting style, and I have a real soft spot for it. It is where my own coffee journey properly started.
A brief history of Arabica
Every Arabica plant on earth traces back to the forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where coffee still grows wild today. Ethiopia holds almost all the genetic diversity of the whole species. Think of it as the petri dish every other coffee came from.
Somewhere between the 1400s and 1600s, a tiny handful of seeds made the trip from Ethiopia to Yemen. That is where coffee was first properly farmed as a crop, rather than foraged.
When scientists ran the DNA tests, they found that nearly all Arabica in the world today traces back to just 2 varieties that left Yemen: Typica and Bourbon. Remember those 2. They have a big story to tell.
The 4 families of Arabica
There are hundreds of Arabica varieties. You do not need to memorise them. According to the World Coffee Research variety catalogue, they fall into 4 families, and once you know those, everything else clicks into place.
1. Ethiopian landrace
You may have seen this on Ethiopian coffees, sometimes called heirloom. These are wild, traditional, locally adapted coffees, shaped over centuries by nature and human selection rather than a lab. They tend to give lower yields but incredible cups: light, floral, sweet and juicy, with jasmine and Earl Grey notes.
The genetics are so tangled that tracing them is often too much work. So we end up with a beautiful genetic soup, which could hold hundreds of varieties in a single lot. Taste one for yourself in Static Cherry.
2. Bourbon and Typica
The 2 that left Yemen and spread across the coffee world. Typica went to India, then Java with the Dutch, then spent time in a greenhouse in Amsterdam before crossing to the Americas along colonial trade routes in the 1700s. Bourbon went to Bourbon Island, now Réunion, with the French and reached Brazil around 1860.
As they spread, natural mutations appeared. Farmers selected the best ones, and that gave us classics like Caturra, Catuai, Mundo Novo, Pacas, Villa Sarchi and Maragogipe.
3. Introgressed varieties
Introgressed just means genes "brought over" from one species to another. In the 1920s, on the island of Timor, an Arabica and a Robusta crossed naturally. Their accidental love child, the Timor Hybrid, carried Robusta genes that resist coffee leaf rust, a fungal disease that can wipe out a whole farm.
Breeders crossed it with Caturra to create the Catimor family, and with Villa Sarchi to create the Sarchimor family. These include varieties like Costa Rica 95, Lempira, Obata and Parainema. The old trade off was lower cup quality for better survival, but that gap is closing fast. Some of these now score incredibly well.
4. F1 hybrids
The cutting edge. An F1 is the first generation cross of 2 genetically different Arabica parents, and it gets a burst of what breeders call hybrid vigour: high yield, disease resistance and cup quality all at once.
The sting? Save the seeds and replant them, and the next generation loses those traits. So F1s can only be reliably reproduced by cloning in trusted nurseries, which makes them expensive. That is why you do not see many yet.
The varieties you will see on bags
Bourbon
One of the 2 originals. Bourbon is a medium yield plant with a sweet, rounded, balanced cup. When people call a coffee "traditional" or "classic", they are often describing Bourbon. It also throws colour mutations, so alongside Red Bourbon you get Yellow and Orange Bourbon, each with a slightly different flavour. Try it in Go Go Juice, a Red Bourbon from Burundi.
Mythbusting: Pink Bourbon
Pink Bourbon has become very popular, but genetic testing by the importer Cafe Imports shows it is not a Bourbon at all. Its lineage traces back to Ethiopian landrace. That explains why it is so floral, bright and sweet, with big acidity, when Red, Yellow and Orange Bourbon taste nothing like that.
The name came from a Colombian farmer who found salmon pink cherries growing between his Yellow and Red Bourbon trees. You may also see it called Rosado, and it is close to a variety called Aji. There is still DNA work going on to pin down exactly what it is.
Typica
The other original. Typica is low yielding, which is partly why it was replaced across much of the Americas. In the cup it is elegant: clean, sweet and soft, with gentle acidity and caramel notes. Less fireworks, more clarity and balance. You will find it in Jamaica Blue Mountain and some classic Sumatra coffees.
Caturra
Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, found in Brazil in the early 1900s. Its short height made it easy to farm, especially as Brazil moved to machine harvesting on its flat land. It spread across Central and South America and became a true workhorse.
In the cup it is bright and lively, with crisp acidity, a light body and straightforward sweetness. Taste it in Super Strudel, a Bourbon and Caturra lot from Peru.
SL28 and SL34
An African legend. The "SL" stands for Scott Laboratories, a research station in Kenya. In the 1930s, researchers picked out the best single trees and labelled them SL28, SL34 and so on. So these are not lab engineered or GM coffees, a common myth. They are careful selections of natural plants.
SL28 traces back to Bourbon and was chosen for drought resistance, which is why it thrives in Kenya. It is low yielding, but it gives that classic washed Kenyan cup: bright, juicy blackcurrant, big lively acidity and sometimes winey notes. Newer Kenyan varieties like Ruiru 11 and Batian are often grown alongside it.
SL34 is its sister selection, tracing back to Typica. It suits higher altitudes with more rainfall and can also give an exceptional cup. The 2 are often blended in washed Kenyan lots, like our Donut Jam.
Geisha (or Gesha)
The variety that broke the internet and the auction records. It is hard to grow and low yielding, which is part of why it can command such high prices. Panamanian Geisha, grown at high altitude, gives jasmine, bergamot and tea like cups that taste like nothing else on earth. Genetically, it is an Ethiopian landrace, which brings us full circle.
One myth to bust: "Geisha" gets slapped on plenty of coffees that do not share the true Panamanian genetics. Real Geisha is also grown in Malawi, though the soil and lower altitude give a different cup. Today you will also find incredible Geishas from Colombia, Peru and across Central and South America. If you have never tried one, start with Juicy Pants, a natural Geisha from Colombia.
Pacamara
A big personality for a big bean. Pacamara is a cross of Pacas and Maragogipe, one of my personal favourites, made in El Salvador. The beans are massive. The flavour is wild, punchy and sometimes divisive, but when it is well grown and well processed, it is like nothing else. Try it in Liquid Amber.
A quick but important caveat
None of these flavour profiles are guaranteed. Processing, altitude, soil and climate all play a part. A Geisha and a Typica grown right next to each other on the same hill will taste completely different, and the same variety grown somewhere else can taste different again. Variety sets the potential. Everything else decides how much of it reaches your cup.
Genetic diversity and coffee leaf rust
Remember those 2 varieties that left Yemen? Here is the bill for that narrow doorway. Because so many classic varieties came from Bourbon and Typica, they share the same weaknesses.
Coffee leaf rust is a fungal disease that attacks the leaves, strips the trees bare and can devastate entire harvests. When it arrives, it can tear straight through a farm.
The Catimors and Sarchimors were built to solve this. By borrowing rust resistance from Robusta via the Timor Hybrid, they gave farmers trees that could survive, and for almost 30 years it held. But nearly all of them got that resistance from the same single source, and the rust is now starting to outsmart them. It is already breaking through varieties like Lempira in Honduras and Costa Rica 95, and many experts expect more resistant varieties to lose their protection in the coming years.
Sustainability in coffee buying
It is not all doom and gloom. But variety is one of the most important and least talked about subjects in coffee sustainability.
When a farmer chooses a variety, they are making a 20 to 30 year commitment, because that is how long a coffee tree lives and produces. The wrong choice does not cost one bad season. It can cost a generation of bad harvests. Growing a high quality but fragile variety, or investing in a resilient new one, is a real financial risk, and it sits on the farmer's shoulders.
So when we source coffee, we are not just buying flavour. We are backing that farmer for the next 20 to 30 years. It is why we care so much about variety and about the producers we work with year after year, putting our own bet on the bets they are making rather than following hype and trends.
So, why do coffee varieties matter?
Origin, processing and altitude all shape the cup, but variety is the raw instrument underneath them. A Bourbon and a Geisha grown on the same hill, picked on the same day and processed the same way will still taste completely different. And variety decides whether a coffee will still be around in 10 years.
It is not just a marketing word on a bag. It is centuries of history, mutations, natural selection and hard graft, all behind the cup in your hands.
The best way to learn this is to taste it. Explore our coffees, all fully traceable and roasted fresh in Leeds.
