Panama Boquete Catuai Coffee

A Catuaí from Boquete, in the highlands of Chiriquí, Panama. Mist and altitude slow the ripening of the cherries, and the cup is gentle and sweet: citrus blossom and peach over caramel and cocoa, with a clean finish.

Origin & Story

Boquete sits at about 1,200 meters in the highlands of Chiriquí, roughly 60 kilometers from the Costa Rican border, in the shadow of Volcán Barú, the highest point in Panama at 3,475 meters. The name is Spanish for gap or opening, after the passage that gold seekers once used through the mountains. Settlers from Europe and the United States arrived from the mid-1800s, and coffee became one of the valley's main industries.

The climate does much of the work. Temperatures average about 21°C and rain is plentiful, around 2,400 millimeters a year, with September and October the wettest months and February the driest. Coffee farms here run from roughly 1,000 to 2,000 meters, and a fine, drifting mist that locals call the bajareque cools them and slows the ripening of the cherries. Slow ripening gives the beans more time to build sugar.

Panama is famous for Geisha, but its growers plant many varieties, among them Typica, Caturra, Bourbon and Catuaí. Catuaí is a Brazilian variety whose name means very good in the Tupi-Guarani language. Grown high in Boquete, it makes a gentle, sweet cup.

Here that means citrus blossom and peach over caramel and cocoa, with a clean finish. It is an easy coffee to like and a good first Panamanian coffee to try.

A V60 suits it. Use water at 93°C, a medium-fine grind and about 60 g of coffee per liter of water, which works out to 14.4 g for a 240 ml cup.

Reading the Flavor Profile

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