Colombia Santa Rita Coffee Flavor Profile and Characteristics

The Catuai Coffee Variety

Catuai is a variety created by crossing Caturra with Mundo Novo. It stands up well to hardship in the field and is especially resistant to wind and rain.

The Catuai tree is fairly short. Compared with other coffee trees, its cherries cling more firmly to the branch and are harder to pick. The fruit comes in both red and yellow forms. To date, no significant difference in taste has been found between the two. Some cuppers have even observed that although coffee processed from yellow cherries can show good acidity, its mouthfeel is less clean than that of the red-fruited type.

Catuai was first cultivated in Brazil and is now widely planted throughout Central America.

Product Information

Manufacturer: FrontStreet Coffee
Ingredients: Roasted in-house
Shelf life: 90 days
Net weight: 227 g
Packaging: Bulk
Taste: Mellow and aromatic
Bean state: Roasted beans
Sugar content: Sugar-free
Origin: Colombia
Coffee type: Colombian coffee
Roast level: Medium roast

Brewing Instructions

To brew Colombia Santa Rita as a pour-over, use 15 g of coffee ground at a medium setting (Fuji ghost-tooth grinder, setting #4) in a V60 dripper, with water at 88-89°C. Start with a 30 g pour and let the bed bloom for 27 seconds. Pour up to 105 g and pause. Once the water level has fallen halfway, pour slowly again until you reach 225 g, stopping before the tail end of the extraction. The water-to-coffee ratio is 1:15, with a total extraction time of 2:00.

Colombia Santa Rita Special Reserve

Country: Colombia
Region: Antioquia Department
Altitude: 1,600-2,100 meters
Processing method: Washed

The Santa Rita estate sits in Antioquia, Colombia, in a small micro-lot region beside the Andes. This premium coffee is produced through the collaboration of nine nearby farms. Those nine farms still work in the traditional way: cherries are hand-picked and then given a classic washed treatment, after which the beans are laid out on racks to dry in the sun. The Andes surrounding the area give this growing region fertile volcanic soil and unusually favorable water resources.

Varieties: Catuai, Caturra
Estate: Santa Rita

The History of Colombian Coffee

Coffee cultivation in Colombia can be traced back to the Spanish colonial era of the 16th century. Several accounts describe how it arrived.

One holds that coffee was brought from Haiti in the Caribbean, reaching Colombia by water by way of El Salvador in Central America.

Another says that in 1808 a priest first introduced coffee beans to Colombia from the French Antilles by way of Venezuela. One version places Colombia's first coffee seeds entering through Santander Department from Venezuela.

A third points to the earliest written record of coffee growing in Colombia, found in the Spanish missionary Jose Gumilla's book "The Illustrated Orinoca." Gumilla described his experiences preaching along the Meta River in 1730 and mentioned local coffee plantations. By 1787, other missionaries had spread coffee to other parts of Colombia.

Flavor Profile

Flavor: Sugarcane, clean, medium body

Colombia: A Coffee Paradise

Colombia lies in northwestern South America, a beautiful country with a long history. Indigenous peoples have thrived on this land since ancient times. It became a Spanish colony in 1531 and won independence in 1819. In 1886 it adopted its present name in honor of Christopher Columbus, the European discoverer of the American continent.

The country has beautiful mountains, picturesque scenery, a pleasant climate, spring-like weather all year round and fresh air. It is rich in natural resources, with coffee, flowers, gold and emeralds known as its "four treasures." Today it is the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, the largest exporter of Arabica coffee beans and the largest exporter of washed coffee beans.

Colombian coffee is often described as silky smooth. Among all coffees it is regarded as the best balanced, with a soft, gentle taste that can be enjoyed at any time. It has earned praise few other coffees can claim, and is nicknamed "green gold."

The Caturra Variety

Caturra is a natural mutation of the Arabica Bourbon variety, discovered in Brazil in 1937. The plant is more compact than Bourbon and not as tall. Because of its Bourbon parentage it has relatively weak disease resistance, though it outyields Bourbon. Despite being discovered in Brazil, Caturra is not well suited to growing there, so it was never widely planted in the country. It became popular instead in Central and South America, with large-scale cultivation in Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Flavor tends to interest people more than botanical detail. The higher the altitude at which Caturra is grown, the better its quality, though yields drop accordingly. Lightly roasted, Caturra shows distinctly acidic aromas and overall brightness. With careful processing its sweetness can be excellent, but its body is relatively light next to Bourbon and its mouthfeel is somewhat less clean.

Caturra normally bears red cherries, though in very rare regions there are yellow Caturra varieties. Hawaii, for instance, grows very small quantities of yellow Caturra.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the balance and gentle sweetness of Colombian coffee are what you enjoy, Brazil makes an equally easy-drinking starting point. FrontStreet Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic single-origin lot from the well-known Cerrado growing region, and it carries on the Red Bourbon thread running through this article. Medium-roasted, it offers the rich aromas of creamy peanut, toasted bread, caramel and hazelnut, with a rounded body, no noticeable acidity and only a faint trace of bitterness. It works beautifully as a pour-over, and equally well in a moka pot, as an espresso SOE, in a siphon or in a French press.

For a rarer expression of the same family, FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Estate Yellow Bourbon comes from Mogiana, close to South Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil helps the cherries take up abundant nutrients and develop a full aroma. The variety here is the uncommon Yellow Bourbon, a mutation of Red Bourbon, and it drinks with a cleaner fruit character. Brewed as pour-over, in a moka pot or on a home espresso machine, it reveals the clear sugarcane sweetness found in no other region, alongside fruit and chocolate notes.

Brazilian beans also form the backbone of many of FrontStreet's espresso blends, where their low acidity, balanced body and approachable price make them a natural base. The classic blend with its rich crema, the nutty specialty blend and the well-balanced Black Cocoa blend all rely on Brazil for chocolate and cream aromas and for a soft, even play of sweetness, acidity and bitterness that keeps extraction stable.