Caturra Coffee: The Small Bourbon That Took Over
Key takeaways
Caturra is a natural single-gene mutation of Bourbon, found in Minas Gerais, Brazil, between 1915 and 1918. Its name comes from the Guarani word for 'small'.
It is the most-listed variety name on Cuppd: 1,911 lots in stock from 579 roasters, roughly one bag in seven, ahead of Bourbon (1,305).
Colombia supplies almost half of it (932 lots), and 535 of those also list Castillo, the rust-resistant variety that replaced much of Colombia's Caturra after 2008.
The typical Caturra cup is caramel and chocolate, but the 344 lots that are Caturra alone are far more experimental: more than one in five is a fermentation lot.
Questions this article answers
What is Caturra coffee?
What does Caturra coffee taste like?
What is the difference between Caturra and Bourbon?
Is Caturra better than Castillo?
Is Catuai the same as Caturra?
Where is the best Caturra coffee grown?
Somewhere in Minas Gerais, around 1915, a Bourbon coffee tree came up short. Not sick, not stunted, just compact, with its branches packed tight together. Somebody planted its seed, the seedlings came up short too, and the coffee world spent the next century rebuilding itself around that one dwarf.
That tree is Caturra. You have almost certainly drunk it without reading the name: 1,911 Caturra coffees are in stock across 579 roasters on Cuppd right now, about one bag in seven, which makes it the most-listed variety on the site. Here is where it came from, why farmers loved it, what it tastes like, and why Colombia ended up fighting about it.
Caturra in stock right now
Where does Caturra coffee come from?
Brazil. Caturra is a natural mutation of Bourbon, discovered in the state of Minas Gerais between 1915 and 1918. A single gene changed and made the plant grow small, which is also where the name comes from: World Coffee Research traces it to the Guarani word for 'small'. Nobody bred it. It just happened, and somebody was paying attention.
Dwarf (or compact) variety: a coffee plant with short gaps between its branches, so it stays low and bushy. Easier to pick, easier to pack into a field, and usually more cherry per hectare.
Brazil's agronomic institute, the IAC in Campinas, started selecting it in 1937, and then did something odd: it never officially released Caturra in Brazil. The variety made its name abroad instead. It reached Guatemala in the 1940s, took another few decades to catch on, and by the 1970s it was everywhere in Central America, from Costa Rica and Honduras to Panama.
Fun fact
Brazil is where Caturra was born and one of the places it never really took off. Only 132 of the 1,911 Caturra lots in stock come from Brazil, against 932 from Colombia.
Why did Caturra change how coffee is farmed?
Because it fits more trees into a field. An old-style Typica farm holds 3,000 to 4,000 plants per hectare; a compact Caturra farm holds 5,000 to 6,000, according to World Coffee Research. More trees, easier picking, more coffee from the same hillside. That is the whole revolution, and it changed what coffee farms look like.
It also made Caturra the parent of half the modern catalogue. Breeders crossed it with Mundo Novo to make Catuai, and with the rust-resistant Timor Hybrid to make the whole Catimor family. You can see the family tree in the bags themselves: 570 in-stock Caturra lots also list Bourbon, 547 Castillo, 478 Catuai and 411 Typica.
The catch is coffee leaf rust. World Coffee Research rates Caturra's susceptibility as very high, and dense plantings of one vulnerable variety are exactly what a fungus likes. That weakness is the whole reason the next section exists.
Is Caturra better than Castillo?
Not reliably, and the shelf has mostly stopped caring. Caturra was once thought to make up nearly half of Colombia's production. From 2008 a government programme paid farmers to renovate more than three billion trees, largely with the rust-resistant Castillo, and a long argument about cup quality followed. Our Colombia guide covers that argument; here is what it looks like in the catalogue.
Caturra still appears on 30% of all Colombian lots in stock, and Castillo on 25%. But the two mostly travel together: 535 of the 932 Colombian Caturra lots also list Castillo. Only 205 Colombian lots are Caturra alone. When a mill blends a hillside of mixed trees, 'Caturra, Castillo' is simply an honest label for what was picked.
Caturra and Castillo in the same bag
What does Caturra coffee taste like?
Sweet and clean, with a bit more brightness than its parent. Across the 1,911 lots, roasters printed 219 different notes, and the top of the list is a dessert trolley: chocolate on 24% of lots, caramel on 23%, milk chocolate on 13%, then dark chocolate, almond, cocoa and honey. Put it next to its parent and the data barely blinks: Bourbon lots list chocolate 26% of the time and caramel 22%. Same family, same dessert trolley.
Processing pulls it in two directions. Washed is the big camp, 1,365 lots or 71% of the total, and it leans caramel, milk chocolate and almond. The 374 naturals swap some of that for cherry and strawberry (10% each), and the 91 anaerobic lots go further again, with strawberry, plum and cherry each on about one in seven.
Here is the twist. Look only at the 344 lots that are Caturra and nothing else, and more than a fifth of them (78) are fermentation lots: co-ferments, anaerobics, extended and yeast fermentations. Across all Caturra that figure is 10%. A farm that separates its Caturra is usually a farm that wants to show off, and in Colombia showing off right now means the fermentation tank.
Colombian Caturra, processed loud
Co-fermentation: the coffee ferments alongside added fruit, yeast or other ingredients, which pushes flavours like watermelon or raspberry into the cup. Fun, divisive, and not what Caturra tastes like on its own.
Which countries grow the most Caturra?
Colombia, by a distance: 932 of the 1,911 lots, almost half, with Huila alone accounting for 292. Then Guatemala (272), Peru (262) and Costa Rica (170). Thirty-two countries grow it, but the core is the Andes and Central America, the places that adopted it from the 1940s on.
The origin shows in the cup. Guatemalan Caturra is the chocolate-and-almond one: chocolate on 29% of lots, almond and plum on 11% each, mostly from Huehuetenango (114 lots). Peruvian Caturra is the caramel one, at 28%, with almond and brown sugar behind it. Colombian Caturra sits in between and carries the widest range, simply because there is so much of it.
If you want Caturra on its own, the map shifts. Of the 344 single-variety lots, Colombia still leads with 205, but Costa Rica (35) and Guatemala (27) come next, and Bolivia, with 18, punches far above its size. 16 of those 18 Bolivian lots come from a single region, Caranavi, a province of La Paz department in the Yungas valleys.
Fun fact
Caturra is the quiet backbone of decaf. 330 of the 1,911 Caturra lots are decaffeinated, 17% against 9% across the whole catalogue, and 263 of those are Colombian. One in four decafs on Cuppd lists Caturra.
Caturra in Central America
Which roasters sell the most Caturra?
Lots of them, a little each. Of the 579 roasters with Caturra in stock (Onyx's US and EU shops counted as one), 176 have exactly one lot, but 126 carry five or more, far more than for a niche variety. The top two, Cafés San Agustín and Olisipo Coffee Roasters, hold 48 lots between them, only 2.5% of the total. Caturra is a staple, not a speciality.
Cafés San Agustín in León, Spain, has the deepest list at 25, spread over five countries. Olisipo in Lisbon is close behind with 23, but none of its listings has a product photo in our catalogue yet, so it has no card here. Third place is a tie at 22 between Sample Coffee in Sydney, all washed and 16 of them Colombian, and Five Senses in Perth, which leans Guatemalan, so both get a card.
How to buy one well: read the variety line. 'Caturra, Castillo, Colombia' tells you it is a regional blend of trees, which is fine for a daily cup and great value in milk. 'Caturra' alone, with a farm name and a producer, is where the variety gets to speak, and the process line then tells you whether you are getting the classic caramel cup or a fermentation experiment.
The honest summary: Caturra is not the variety you buy for a story, it is the one that quietly makes a lot of very good coffee. For the cleanest view of it, pick a washed lot from a single farm that lists Caturra alone, and brew it as filter. Browse all 1,911 Caturra coffees in stock, and when one surprises you, rate it on Cuppd so the next person can find it.
How did we count 1,911 Caturra coffees?
Every number on this page is a count from the Cuppd catalogue, not an estimate or a survey. Specifically:
- Source: the product listings on 940 specialty roasters' own online shops, not marketplaces or resellers. A coffee counts once per shop; brands with two shops, such as Onyx's US and EU stores, are counted as one roaster.
- In stock: every coffee is re-checked against the roaster's shop once a month. All 1,911 Caturra lots here were confirmed available on 2 October 2026.
- Variety: as the roaster labels it. Lots labelled Red, Yellow or Purple Caturra are counted under those names (81 in stock carry only a coloured Caturra) and are not in these figures.
- What counts as a Caturra: any coffee whose roaster lists Caturra among its varieties. 344 of the 1,911 list Caturra alone; 1,567 are mixed-variety lots and 241 combine more than one origin.
- Tasting notes: the roaster's own notes, mapped onto a shared vocabulary of 330 notes so that different spellings of the same note count once. A lot can list several notes, so shares do not add up to 100%.
- Not ranked: nothing here is scored or sponsored. The roasters above are ordered by how many Caturra lots they stock, nothing else.
Caturra on the price index
October 2026€58 per kg at the median, same as all coffees. Half of Caturra coffees cost between €49 and €68/kg, across 1,633 coffees from 539 roasters.
See the Cuppd Specialty Coffee Price Index →