Coffee Varietals | Waveney Valley Coffee
You will come across many names of bean or 'varietal' as you delve deeper into the world of good coffee. What do all those names mean, how do you know what is what? Well that was a question I used to be lost in and to be honest, it's a world that you never stop learning. However, it is not as complex as it sounds at first and there is a wealth of reading out there; some of it is very dry and dull. Coffee is for drinking and yes some people can get a little obsessed with the detail.
The main thing to remember is not to get too hung up on it all. Like all things in life, some people find the detail interesting.
I believe one should actively seek new beans, perhaps one you have never heard of, or perhaps something processed differently, maybe a new region, and try them different things as often as you can. In many ways coffee is much like wine, there are good crops, and bad crops, OK crops and absolutely sublime crops. Each season will bring subtle differences in weather and it's often these very subtle differences that can change a coffee from nice, to superb, or indeed what was a superb coffee into some more mediocre.
Top quality coffee, like all good things, is not mass produced. Growing, harvesting and processing the very finest coffee is a labour intensive process. It is often done on relatively small farms and estates and each season there is a finite amount of green coffee available from each grower.
As the coffee season moves around the globe, different regions come into harvest so there is always something new out there to try.
When doing some research for this site, I happened across this article below, which is quite informative without being either too lengthy nor too dry. Make a coffee, hopefully a good one, sit in a comfy chair and have a read.
With wine, we think of ordering by a specific variety alongside its origin. With coffee, I believe this will also eventually happen. The more we dig into where the coffee industry is heading, the more convinced I am that we are closely following the wine industry.
A brilliant article by: Andres Latorre Canon – Latorre & Dutch Coffee Traders
Other notable varietals:
These varieties most resemble the Typica variety though there is no exact way of tracing their development. There are over 1000 different varieties growing in the wild forests of Ethiopia. These varieties are responsible for some of the most coverted cup profiles in the world.