Released in 2005 and named for researcher Jaime Castillo Zapata, Castillo combines Caturra with Timor HybridA spontaneous cross of arabica and robusta found on Timor in the 1920s. The source of leaf rust resistance in Castillo, Tabi and most modern bred varieties.More → lines. It was made for Colombian growing conditions and resistance to Leaf rustHemileia vastatrix, la roya: the fungus that strips arabica of its leaves. Colombia's breeding programme exists to resist it, which is why Castillo and Tabi carry Timor Hybrid lines.More →.
The house treats the variety name as provenance, never a verdict. Good ground, careful picking and clean processing still have the final word.
Not one variety
Castillo is a composite. The cross was made once, but the release was a mixture of F5 and F6 seed whose component lines carry different resistance genes, so leaf rust cannot defeat the whole population at once. Cenicafé contrasts it deliberately with Costa Rica 95, a single line from the same cross that has already lost its resistance in parts of Antioquia.
It is also plural in a second sense. Six regional Castillos were described at release, each named for the experimental station where its components were selected, and Castillo El Tambo followed in 2006 to make seven, alongside a general version for everywhere else. A bag marked Castillo is one of several related populations bred for a particular part of the country.
The name
Jaime Castillo Zapata worked at Cenicafé and, with Germán Moreno, devised the composite-variety strategy that produced variedad Colombia and the early Castillo generations. He died in 2001, four years before the release. The naming was posthumous, and trade copy describing him as leading the programme that bore his name overstates it.
Castillo is not a dwarf, despite how it is often described. At around 2.37 metres it stands taller than variedad Colombia and well above Caturra, with longer branches.
The quality argument
The belief that Castillo cups below Caturra has been tested and not supported. Twenty-two paired samples judged blind showed no significant difference in score. The profiles are genuinely different; the quality is not.
Cenicafé's own release panels reached the same place, finding Castillo homogeneous with Típica, Caturra, Borbón, Colombia and Tabi. The honest caveat is that the paired study was small, one region, one harvest. It is enough to retire the blanket claim, not enough to settle any particular lot. That is what CuppingTasting coffee to a set protocol: ground, steeped, the crust broken and the cup slurped from a spoon, so lots can be scored on the same table.More → the lot is for.
2 Castillo prize lots: NZ$44 to NZ$76 a kilo.
- Castillo
- Other varieties
Source: Cup of Excellence, Stats NZ · 2023
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence, public results
- Stats NZ, CC BY 4.0
- FRED exchange rates, public domain
Prize lots: Cup of Excellence, Colombia's national competition, where the top-scoring green coffee beans are sold at an online auction. Winning bids in Colombia, before shipping, at each year's average exchange rate.
Everyday green coffee beans: the average value of green coffee beans imported into New Zealand from Colombia that year, with freight and insurance, before GST.