Sidra Coffee: The Ecuadorian Variety That Wins Championships
Key takeaways
Sidra is usually traced to a former Nestlé breeding station in Pichincha, Ecuador, and was never formally released as a variety.
A 2026 genetic study placed Sidra with Ethiopian landraces, not with the Bourbon × Typica cross it was long sold as.
It won the World Barista Championship twice in four years: Jooyeon Jeon in 2019 and Anthony Douglas in 2022 both used Colombian Sidra.
It is still rare: 74 Sidra lots are in stock on Cuppd, about one coffee in 188, almost all from Colombia (38) and Ecuador (27).
Expect peach (19% of lots), grape (18%) and florals; Colombian lots lean tropical, Ecuadorian ones lean grape and jasmine.
Questions this article answers
What is Sidra coffee?
Is Sidra a cross between Bourbon and Typica?
What does Sidra coffee taste like?
Which World Barista Champions used Sidra?
Is Sidra from Ecuador or Colombia?
Most coffee varieties come with a breeder, a date and a catalogue number. Sidra comes with a rumour. The usual story is that it grew out of a coffee breeding station Nestlé once ran in northern Ecuador, that the station closed, and that some of its unfinished plants walked out onto local farms and never went back.
Then it won the World Barista Championship. Twice. Which is how a variety with no official paperwork ended up on the shelves of 61 roasters, with 74 lots in stock on Cuppd right now. That is still small — about one coffee in 188 — so here is everything worth knowing before you buy one.
Sidra in stock right now
Where does Sidra coffee come from?
Pichincha, the Ecuadorian province around Quito, according to almost every account. The most widely told version is that Nestlé ran a breeding station there, crossing Ethiopian coffee with Bourbon in search of better quality and yield, and that Sidra was one of the selections still in progress when the station shut. It was never formally released. It spread from farm to farm in Ecuador instead, and later crossed the border into Colombia.
We cannot hand you a date, a breeder or a document for any of that, and neither can anyone else writing about Sidra. That is not unusual. Coffee largely lacks a formal seed sector, and a lot of today's famous varieties travelled the same way: one farmer's seed in another farmer's pocket.
Fun fact
Sidra means 'cider' in Spanish. Nobody has a documented reason for the name, but given how often roasters print grape, apple and 'winey' on the bag, it is not a bad fit.
Published descriptions of the plant agree on a tree that is easy to pick out in a field: tall, up to about four metres, with a thick trunk, dark leaves and large, round cherries packed tight along the branches. The green beans are long and slender, closer to Geisha's shape than to Bourbon's. None of that proves a pedigree, but it was an early hint that the hybrid story did not quite fit.
Colombia took to it quickly. La Palma y El Tucán, the farm behind the first championship-winning Sidra, told Perfect Daily Grind it planted its first 1,800 commercial Sidra trees in 2012 and another 4,300 in 2015. Today Colombia has more Sidra on the shelf than Ecuador: 38 lots against 27, most of the Colombian ones from Huila. Together the two countries account for 65 of the 74 lots. For the wider picture of the country, see our Colombia guide.
Is Sidra a Bourbon and Typica hybrid?
Probably not, though that is how it was sold for years. The Nestlé story says Ethiopian-by-Bourbon; many roasters simply wrote Bourbon-by-Typica, which would have made it a close cousin of Bourbon and half the coffee on the shelf. The DNA keeps saying something else. In 2026 a team of researchers published a study in Frontiers in Plant Science, pointedly titled 'What you plant may not be what you bought', which tested specialty varieties on Ecuadorian farms. The plants matching Sidra fell in the 'Core Ethiopia' group, and the authors call it most likely a selected Ethiopian landrace rather than a hybrid. That puts it in the same family as Geisha and Pink Bourbon.
Landrace: a traditional coffee population that adapted on its own over generations, rather than being bred deliberately. Most Ethiopian coffee is landrace material, which is why it is so diverse.
There is a second wrinkle. World Coffee Research has cautioned that Sidra may not have one clear genetic identity at all, and that farmers may be using the name for a few different plants. So the honest answer to 'what is Sidra?' is: an Ethiopian-type coffee from Ecuador, usually. Cuppd currently files it as 'Ethiopian Landrace, Bourbon' while the evidence settles.
Why do baristas win championships with Sidra?
Because it gives a judge something unmistakable in a 15-minute routine. In 2019 Jooyeon Jeon of Momos Coffee in Busan won the World Barista Championship with an anaerobic Sidra from La Palma y El Tucán in Colombia. In 2022 Anthony Douglas of Axil Coffee in Melbourne won it with an anaerobic natural Sidra grown by Néstor Lasso at Finca El Diviso in Huila. Two titles in four years put the variety on every specialty buyer's list.
Both winning coffees were fermented as well as rare, and that shows in today's shelf. 24 of the 74 lots, about a third, go through anaerobic, double or other fermentation-style processing. If you want to taste something close to the 2022 cup, two Néstor Lasso Sidras from El Diviso are in stock right now: one in the carousel above, one below.
Anaerobic: the coffee ferments in sealed tanks with the oxygen pushed out, which tends to amplify fruit and booze-like flavours. Great for competition; a bit much for some people's mornings.
What does Sidra coffee taste like?
Fruity first, floral second, with a winey edge. Across the 74 lots roasters used 105 different tasting notes. Peach leads at 14 lots (19%), then grape (18%), a general floral note (14%), pineapple and mango (12% each), with jasmine and honey close behind at about 10%.
Processing pulls it in two directions. Washed is the biggest group at 41 lots, and there Sidra is floral, peachy and honey-sweet, with honey and peach each on 15% of washed lots and rose and apricot on 10%. The 23 naturals are a tropical fruit bowl: peach and mango on a quarter of them each, passion fruit on 22%.
Origin moves it too. Colombian Sidra is the tropical one — peach on 26% of its 38 lots, passion fruit, lychee and mango on 13% each. Ecuadorian Sidra is cooler and more perfumed: grape (22%), then floral, jasmine and plum (15% each), with rose on one lot in nine. Roasters keep it light, too: 37 of the 74 are labelled light roast, against six medium.
Next to its Ethiopian-type relatives it is the fruitiest of the three. Geisha is defined by jasmine, on 26% of Geisha lots; Pink Bourbon by a general floral note (13%) with raspberry. Sidra puts peach and grape first and jasmine down at 11%. If Geisha is a flower shop and Pink Bourbon a fruit salad with a garnish, Sidra is the bowl of stone fruit and grapes at the end of a long lunch.
Ecuador — grape, florals, rose
Colombia — peach, passion fruit, lychee
Which roasters sell the most Sidra?
Almost nobody stocks more than one. Of the 61 roasters with Sidra in stock, 51 carry exactly one lot and none carries five or more. Red Rooster in Floyd, Virginia, leads with four, then Passenger in Lancaster with three; together they hold seven lots, under a tenth of the shelf.
That is too thin for the usual three roaster cards, so there is one. Red Rooster's four lots are all pure Sidra, all meet our data standard and cover both countries. Passenger's three do not yet carry the provenance data we require before linking a coffee, and no other roaster has more than two.
Most of the buying happens in the US: American roasters list 20 of the 74 lots, then the Netherlands (7), the UK (6) and Australia (4). A handful of lots come from outside the two main origins — Peru (3), Brazil (2) and single lots from Ethiopia, Guatemala and Nicaragua — so Sidra is starting to travel, slowly.
The rest is a long tail of single bags, which is fine: with a variety this small, the one-lot shops are where most of the range lives. It also moves fast. 235 Sidra lots have passed through the catalogue in total, and only 74 are in stock now, so a lot you like may not be there next month.
Is Sidra coffee worth buying?
Yes, if you like fruit-forward, floral coffee and drink it black. Start with a washed Ecuadorian lot to taste the variety itself: grape, rose, peach, clean. Then try a fermented Colombian one to taste what made it famous on the competition stage. Brew both as filter; most of what makes Sidra distinctive is aroma.
Sidra is a championship coffee with no birth certificate, and the cup is more interesting than the paperwork. Browse all 74 Sidra coffees in stock, grab one while it lasts, and rate it on Cuppd so the next person knows which lot was worth it.
How did we count 74 Sidra coffees?
Every number on this page is a count from the Cuppd catalogue, not an estimate. Specifically:
- Source: the product listings on 940 specialty roasters' own online shops, not marketplaces or resellers. A coffee counts once per roaster 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 74 Sidra lots here were confirmed available on 2 October 2026.
- Variety: as the roaster labels it, matched to the catalogue name 'Sidra'. Names such as 'Bourbon Sidra' and 'Sidra Bourbon' are merged into it, since they describe the same plant.
- What counts: any coffee whose roaster lists Sidra among its varieties. 64 of the 74 are Sidra only; 10 list other varieties too, and 1 combines more than one origin.
- Tasting notes: the roaster's own notes, mapped onto a shared vocabulary of 330 notes. A lot can carry several notes and processes, so shares do not add up to 100%. With 74 lots, a single coffee moves a share by more than one percentage point.
- Not ranked: nothing here is scored or sponsored. Roasters are ordered by how many Sidra lots they stock, nothing else.
Sidra on the price index
October 2026€124 per kg at the median, +114% vs all coffees. Half of Sidra coffees cost between €100 and €168/kg, across 70 coffees from 60 roasters.
See the Cuppd Specialty Coffee Price Index →