Wine has Chardonnay, Pinot and Riesling. Coffee has Bourbon, Gesha and SL28, same idea,
same species, wildly different personalities. The variety sets the ceiling of what a coffee can taste
like; farm, process and roast decide how much of it lands in your cup.
A fair word on Robusta
We roast Arabica start to finish, so Robusta barely gets a look-in on this page. That is a bit unfair on it, so here is the rest of the story.
Where you meet it: almost all instant coffee, plenty of supermarket blends, and the traditional Italian espresso, where a splash of Robusta builds thick crema, a heavier body and a caffeine kick. It grows lower and hotter than Arabica, shrugs off pests and disease, and crops heavily, which is why roughly 40 percent of the world’s coffee is Robusta.
Why it tastes blunter: more caffeine and more chlorogenic acid means more bitterness and less of the delicate fruit and florals. Think punchy, woody and grainy, sometimes a peanut or dark chocolate note. Brilliant for a bold, cheap, high caffeine cup, less so for sipping black.
The rust that changed everything: in the 1800s a fungus called coffee leaf rust swept the tropics and all but wiped out the coffee island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, which gave up and planted tea instead. That scare is what sent breeders hunting for tougher, disease-proof plants.
The plot twist you just met: Robusta’s genes quietly saved Arabica. The natural Arabica and Robusta cross found on Timor passed its leaf rust resistance into Catimor, Castillo and the whole modern rust proof family, so a little Robusta is hiding in a lot of the clean, sweet coffee we all drink.
The comeback: a “fine Robusta” movement is now growing and processing it with real care, and the best examples are genuinely good. The species was never really the problem, the usual lack of care was.
Typica the founding grape of coffee
Origin story: the original travelling Arabica, out of Yemen, through India and Indonesia to Amsterdam’s botanical gardens, then across the Americas in the 1700s. Almost all the coffee that first spread across the Americas grew from a handful of Typica plants, though Bourbon later arrived on its own and founded the other great New World line.
Tastes like: clean, sweet, mild and elegant. Refined, not showy.
Hook: beautiful in the cup, notoriously stingy on the tree, which is why farmers spent a century breeding around it.
Bourbon Typica’s sweeter sibling
Origin story: Yemeni coffee planted by the French on Bourbon Island (now Réunion) in the early 1700s, where it mutated into its own type.
Tastes like: sweeter and juicier than Typica, caramel, red fruit, rounder body. The crowd-pleasing all-rounder.
Hook: named after an island, not a whiskey, though both trace their names to the French royal House of Bourbon by completely separate routes.
Caturra Bourbon → dwarf mutation, Brazil (1910s)
Origin story: a single-gene dwarf mutation of Bourbon spotted in Brazil in the 1910s. Same plant, shrunk, easier to pick, packs into tight rows.
Tastes like: bright, clean, citrusy and lively, a touch sharper than its parent.
Hook: coffee’s compact hatchback, and the parent of a whole rust-resistant dynasty.
Mundo Novo Typica × Bourbon, found wild (1943)
Origin story: a natural Typica–Bourbon hybrid found growing wild in São Paulo in 1943, nature doing the crossbreeding for free.
Tastes like: full-bodied, low-acid, chocolatey and nutty. Rich and comforting.
Hook: the literal “New World”, it became the backbone of Brazilian coffee, around 40% of the crop at its peak.
Catuaí Mundo Novo × Caturra (1949)
Origin story: a Brazilian lab cross of high-yielding Mundo Novo and compact Caturra.
Tastes like: sweet, balanced, mild, chocolate and caramel, easygoing acidity.
Hook: the name is Guaraní for “very good”. Sturdy enough to hang onto its cherries in wind and rain.
Maragogipe Typica → giant mutation, Bahia
Origin story: a natural Typica mutation from Maragogipe, Brazil, that grows freakishly large beans.
Tastes like: soft, mellow and clean, understated for such a dramatic-looking bean.
Hook: the elephant bean, the largest in commercial coffee, roughly double normal size.
Pacamara Pacas × Maragogipe, El Salvador (1958)
Origin story: a deliberate cross of Pacas (a local Bourbon mutation) with the elephant-bean Maragogipe.
Tastes like: big, wild, unmistakable, herbal and floral with huge body. A love-it-or-argue-about-it cup.
Hook: a competition-circuit favourite precisely because it refuses to taste like anything else.
SL28 & SL34 Scott Labs selections, Kenya (1930s–40s)
Origin story: both chosen at Kenya’s Scott Agricultural Laboratories in the 1930s. SL28 came from hardy, drought-tolerant Bourbon stock. SL34 was long thought to be French Mission Bourbon too, but DNA overturns that, grouping it with the old Typica line, which itself traces back to Ethiopia, not with Bourbon.
Tastes like: the definitive Kenyan cup, vivid blackcurrant, juicy tomato-like savouriness, wine-like acidity, syrupy body.
Hook: that legendary blackcurrant intensity comes partly from thirst, old, deep-rooted, water-stressed SL28 trees make the most electric cups.
Heads up: so much coffee ships as ‘SL28’ that a good chunk has quietly drifted from the true variety over the decades, so the name is a guide, not a guarantee.
Castillo & the Catimor family where Robusta sneaks back in
Origin story: crosses built on the Timor Hybrid, a natural Arabica–Robusta romance found on the island of Timor. Colombia’s Castillo (released 2005, a composite of many sister lines) is the star pupil.
Tastes like: clean, sweet, balanced, caramel and gentle fruit; the tough newer selections keep closing the gap on the fancy stuff.
Hook: Timor’s Robusta genes carry leaf-rust resistance that has saved entire coffee economies. Genetic insurance in plant form.
Gesha Ethiopian forest → Panama superstardom
Origin story: collected from Ethiopia’s Gori Gesha forest in the 1930s, planted in Panama in the 1960s for rust resistance, then it won Best of Panama in 2004 and became the most famous coffee on earth.
Tastes like: jasmine, bergamot, peach, tea-like delicacy. The “champagne of coffee”.
Hook: at the 2025 Best of Panama auction a washed Gesha sold for US$30,204 per kilogram. (You’ll also see it spelt “Geisha”, both spellings trace back to the 1930s paperwork.)
Ethiopian landraces the motherland of all Arabica
Origin story: not one variety but thousands of wild and semi-wild types that evolved across Ethiopia’s forests over millennia, estimates run from 6,000 to over 15,000.
Tastes like: floral and tea-like when washed; blueberry jam when natural. Endlessly varied.
Hook: when a bag says “heirloom”, it’s a polite shrug, nobody has finished counting them.
Pink Bourbon the identity-crisis coffee
Origin story: a salmon-pink-cherried coffee that rose to fame in Huila, Colombia, assumed for years to be a red × yellow Bourbon cross.
Tastes like: pink lemonade, honeysuckle, jasmine, suspiciously like a washed Ethiopian…
Hook: DNA testing revealed it isn’t a Bourbon at all, it’s genetically an Ethiopian landrace wearing a Bourbon’s name. The cup was telling the truth all along.
Sidra Ecuador’s floral mystery
Origin story: a modern Ecuadorian superstar with a hotly debated pedigree, some point to a Bourbon–Typica background, but its genetics and its cup lean so hard toward Ethiopia that growers file it with the landrace wild cards.
Tastes like: jasmine, bergamot and stone fruit with tea-like clarity, Gesha’s equally glamorous cousin.
Hook: Ecuador’s answer to Gesha, and a fixture on the competition and auction circuit.
Want the full genetic map? Coffee geneticist Dr Christophe Montagnon plots every major Arabica and Robusta cultivar on his Arabica Cultivars Wheel, the proper family tree, and a fine rabbit hole.
Love Sauvignon Blanc?→Washed Ethiopian heirloom, racy citrus, jasmine, green-herb lift.
Riesling person?→Washed Kenyan SL28, electric acidity with a just-sweet tension.
Cab Sav loyalist?→Kenyan SL28 again, it literally tastes of blackcurrant with a firm backbone.
Pinot Noir romantic?→Gesha, perfume and elegance over power.
Shiraz by the fire?→Natural Brazil, big body, ripe dark fruit, chocolate, soft acidity.
Oaked Chardonnay?→Pacamara or a honey Bourbon, round, textural, stone-fruit sweet.
