Baking spices, lime peel, and a brisk black tea note on the nose lead to a sweet and impeccably balanced cup with pleasant flavors of roasted almond, bittersweet cocoa, and cooked fruit.
This delicious catuaí variety selection from Finca Los Yoyos, a winner of the Honduras Cup of Excellence competition in 2015, offers an impeccably sweet and balanced expression of the terroir of Santa Barbara.
Passenger has proudly purchased coffee from Eulogio Martinez’s farm, Finca Los Yoyos, in Santa Barbara, Honduras for seven consecutive years. Back in 2015, Don Eulogio received international recognition when a parainema variety separation from his farm was awarded first place in the Honduras Cup of Excellence competition. At the time of the competition parainema (a hybrid variety with an extremely bright, acidity-driven flavor profile) was largely unknown to the competition judges, and the high price that Eulogio’s competition lot earned at auction inspired many other coffee producers in Santa Barbara to plant parainema on their farms as well.
While parainema is the variety that is most famously associated with Los Yoyos, Eulogio also cultivates catuaí on his farm, and this particular catuaí lot was the standout among the offer samples that our green buying team evaluated from the 2022 harvest.
The catuaí variety, a cross of mundo novo and caturra, is relatively high yielding and compact in stature, making it possible to plant this variety very densely to maximize productivity. Unfortunately catuaí is also highly susceptible to coffee leaf rust or “roya” which can spread more aggressively in densely planted fields. Catuaí accounts for close to half of all arabica production in Honduras, and in the hands of a skilled producer like Eulogio Martinez, the variety possesses a deeply sweet and balanced flavor profile