Most of what we grow is Arabica, and that’s not changing — it’s the backbone of the farm and what our quality reputation is built on. But this season we planted a small experimental lot of canephora (commonly known as robusta), and we want to be upfront about what that is and isn’t.
What this trial actually is
It’s small — a limited number of plants, not a shift in what the farm produces. The goal is to learn, not to replace anything. Canephora tends to handle heat and certain pests differently than Arabica does, and as growing conditions shift over time, understanding how it performs on our specific soil and altitude is useful information to have, even if it never becomes a significant part of what we grow.
Why we’re testing new varieties at all
Beyond the canephora trial, we’re also evaluating a few newer Arabica varieties suited to our specific conditions — altitude, soil, and the volcanic terrain around us. Coffee varieties differ in yield, disease resistance, and cup character, and a farm that never tests anything new is making a quiet bet that today’s conditions will stay exactly the same indefinitely. We don’t think that’s a safe assumption to make.
What we’re not doing
We’re not converting the farm to robusta, and we’re not walking away from the varieties and processing methods that got us an 87-point score on our last dried-process lot. This is a controlled experiment on a small footprint, evaluated on its own terms.
What’s next
We’ll report back once we have real results — first harvest data, cup quality, and whether it’s worth expanding at all. For now, it’s one small lot among many plots doing what they’ve always done.
