Chiroso

Chiroso is an Arabica variety grown almost entirely in Urrao, a mountain municipality in south-west Antioquia, Colombia. The name is rural Colombian slang: chiroso means something slightly elongated or stretched out, which is exactly what the beans look like next to the stubby ones on the trees around them.¹

Two things make it interesting. First, the plant was filed under the wrong parent for years — growers called it Caturra Chiroso because they assumed it was a long-bean mutation of Caturra, and genetic work now points somewhere else entirely.¹ Second, its reputation rests on a single competition result: in 2014 an Urrao producer took first place in the Colombian Cup of Excellence with it, and the trade has been chasing the variety ever since.²³

It is, in short, the Pink Bourbon story told in a different department — a famous Colombian coffee named after a variety it is probably not related to, with no entry in any official register.

The 2014 Cup of Excellence win

This is the load-bearing fact under the whole Chiroso story, and the official record confirms it. The Alliance for Coffee Excellence results page for Cup of Excellence Colombia South 2014 lists:²

	Rank	Farm	Producer	Region	Score
1	1	Bella Vista	Carmen Cecilia Montoya Patiño	Urrao (Antioquia)	91.31
2	2	El Cairo	Lucas German Melo Pinchao	Consacá (Nariño)	91.09
3	3	La Esperanza	Pablo Emilio Montoya Caro	Urrao (Antioquia)	90.59
4	4	El Naranjo	Gonzalo Dagua Conda	Caloto (Cauca)	89.31
5	5	Majagual	Jesus Maria Martinez Gomez	Concordia (Antioquia)	89.13

The producer trade sources call “Doña Carmen” is therefore Carmen Cecilia Montoya Patiño, and her farm is Finca Bella Vista. Two Urrao farms placed in the top three of a national competition in the same year, which is the part that actually made buyers get on a plane.

To verify

ACE’s own results page does not name the variety. The 2014 South table gives rank, farm, producer, region and score — no varietal column.² That the winning lot was Chiroso comes from trade retellings: a Belgian green importer states “in 2014, Doña Carmen Montoya won first place at the Colombia Cup of Excellence with her Chiroso coffee from Urrao, Antioquia”,³ and a Dutch-Colombian exporter writes “it all started in 2014 when Doña Carmen won the Cup of Excellence with this exquisite variety.”⁴ Two independent trade sources agreeing is decent, but the official scoresheet was not seen, and CoE lots are frequently entered under a generic variety name. The 91.31 score and the producer identity are confirmed; the variety attribution is not. No auction price for the lot was found on the ACE page consulted.

What the plant actually is

For most of its commercial life Chiroso was assumed to be a spontaneous mutation of Caturra — hence the local name Caturra Chiroso — which would have placed it inside the Bourbon-Typica group.¹³

That is now doubted. Perfect Daily Grind reports that research institutions have found Chiroso to be “genetically linked to Ethiopian landrace varieties” — wild-descended Ethiopian plants rather than anything in the Bourbon line — and names Lucas Cuadros as having run genetic testing in partnership with a research organisation that reached the same conclusion. The same article states plainly that these studies “have yet to be scientifically verified.”¹

That hedge is the honest position, and this note keeps it.

To verify

The chloroplast-genome paper. A green importer attributes the Ethiopian finding to a 2024 paper in the Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology titled “Assembly and characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of the Colombian coffee varieties Caturra Chiroso, Bourbon Chiroso and Chiroso,” reporting an affinity to Eastern Ethiopian landrace Arabica.³ The journal article itself was not accessed, and the importer page could not be read in full when checked here. The title implies the study treats Caturra Chiroso, Bourbon Chiroso and Chiroso as three separate entries, which is a finer distinction than any trade source makes. Do not quote its methods or conclusions until the paper is read at source.

To verify

The Geisha connection is marketing, not genetics. Several sellers link Chiroso to Geisha or to “heirloom” Ethiopian lineages on the strength of a shared floral character.¹³ No source consulted here reports a test placing Chiroso in Geisha’s lineage. Tasting like something is not being related to it — as the Pink Bourbon note records, testing has specifically distinguished that variety from Geisha.

To verify

How many Chirosos there are. Perfect Daily Grind says two Chiroso types are recognised in Urrao, differing in cherry colour and leaf shape.¹ A US green retailer’s library instead describes the split as “Bourbon Chiroso” (taller trees) and “Caturra Chiroso” (shorter, compact) — a stature distinction, not a cherry-colour one — and dates the variety’s rediscovery to the early 2000s.⁵ That page returned HTTP 403 when checked here, so its wording comes to this note second-hand. Two different accounts of what separates the types, and no register to settle it.

There is no catalogue entry

The World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the nearest thing the industry has to an official register — was checked directly. Chiroso is not in it, and neither are Caturra Chiroso or Bourbon Chiroso; the direct URL returns HTTP 404 and the catalogue index lists 70-odd varieties with no Chiroso among them.⁶

Practically, that means every agronomic number attached to Chiroso comes from a producer, an importer or a roaster — not from a trial. This wiki carries the identical problem on Pink Bourbon and Sidra.

Where it grows

Urrao is the address. The town sits in the Penderisco valley in south-west Antioquia, and specialty Chiroso lots come off farms above it, typically 1,800–2,000 m for the pooled smallholder lots one exporter buys.⁴ Individual farms are marketed higher still — 2,000 m and 2,100 m figures appear on green-seller listings.⁷

Pergamino, the Medellín roaster and exporter, grows roughly 40 hectares of it, and its co-founder Pedro Miguel Echavarría is reported to have come across Chiroso in 2012 at a Cup of Excellence Colombia auction — two years before the win that made the name — and started planting it afterwards.¹

To verify

Whether Chiroso has really left Antioquia. Two commercial listings place it elsewhere in Colombia: a washed “Chiroso Imperial” from Huila at 1,806 m,³ and a farm in Tolima.⁸ Both are seller copy for a single lot, not a planting survey, and neither says where the seed came from. Variety names on Colombian invoices are notoriously loose. Treat Chiroso as an Urrao variety with unconfirmed plantings elsewhere.

To verify

How it got to Urrao. One exporter tells a local oral history: a farmer from Urrao visited a farm in Betulia, Antioquia, saw a lot producing exceptionally well, took seed home, and the seed eventually reached Doña Carmen.⁴ That account was read at source and is reported honestly as a story — it names no farmer, no farm and no date, and nothing explains how an Ethiopian-descended plant reached Antioquia in the first place. Anecdote, not history.

Agronomy — and a direct contradiction

What Perfect Daily Grind reports, from growers: Chiroso grows similarly to Caturra, with short, light green leaves and large yields, and is susceptible to Coffee leaf rust.¹

That last point matters in a country that replanted itself with Castillo precisely to get away from rust — a high-value but rust-susceptible variety is a deliberate risk a producer takes, not a free win.

To verify

Yield: large or small? Perfect Daily Grind, quoting people who farm it, says “large yields.”¹ A green importer’s page instead says Chiroso is generally lower-yielding than commercial varieties, and offers that as the reason it stays rare.³⁹ These are flatly opposed and both are trade sources. No trial data exists — see the missing catalogue entry above — so this wiki states neither as fact. Rarity is at least as well explained by the variety being confined to one municipality.

In the cup, and in competition

Descriptors cluster around white florals, black tea, lemon and honey, with the comparison usually drawn to a washed Ethiopian coffee rather than to anything Colombian.⁹ Perfect Daily Grind adds a silky mouthfeel, citric acidity, and a range running from peach to lemongrass — and quotes the claim that it carries more sweetness and more body than a Geisha.¹ Most documented lots are washed,³ though naturals compete too.

Its highest-profile result outside Colombia is on this wiki already. At the 2025 Best of Panama, a natural Chiroso — “Black Moon Chiroso Constellation”, lot V-02 — placed second in the Varietals category with 92.63, selling at 1,330 per pound** for a 20 lb lot, **26,600 in total, to a Japanese and Korean buying group.¹⁰ A Colombian variety placing second in Panama’s own competition, behind only a Laurina from Hacienda La Esmeralda, is a fair measure of how far the name now travels. Full row on Best of Panama results archive.

To verify

A claimed 2024 Best of Panama win at 94.13. A US green retailer states that at the 2024 Best of Panama a Chiroso took first place in the Varietals category with 94.13 points, beating second place by more than two points, and was “the only Chiroso in the competition.”⁷ This could not be confirmed — the retailer page returned HTTP 403 when checked here, and no official Best of Panama or SCAP results page for 2024 was reachable. It is a single commercial source and it names no farm, owner, lot number, weight or auction price. It does not contradict the 2025 result above — different year, different lot — but a 94.13 would be an extraordinary Varietals score and needs the official catalogue before anyone repeats it. Check bestofpanama.org.

To verify

The “over 85 points” line. A green importer says Chiroso routinely surpasses 85 points on the SCA scale.³ That is a marketing generalisation about a variety, not a measured average — no panel, sample size or cupping protocol is given. The two scores this wiki can actually stand behind are 91.31 (CoE Colombia South 2014, variety unconfirmed)² and 92.63 (BoP 2025 Varietals, second place).¹⁰

Related

• Pink Bourbon — the closest parallel anywhere: a Colombian variety named after a parent it is not descended from, DNA pointing at Ethiopia, and no catalogue entry
• Caturra — the variety it was assumed to be a mutation of, and whose growth habit it shares
• Bourbon-Typica group — the family it was filed under and probably does not belong to
• Geisha — the variety it is constantly compared to on flavour, with no genetic basis found
• Sidra — another famous variety with a contested pedigree and no register entry
• Colombia · Huila — the country it comes from, and the department where it may have spread
• Ethiopia — where the genetic work points
• World Coffee Research — keeper of the catalogue that has no Chiroso entry
• Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the competition and body behind the 2014 result
• Best of Panama · Best of Panama results archive — where its 2025 Varietals placing is recorded
• Coffee leaf rust · Castillo — the disease it is reported susceptible to, and the variety Colombia replanted with to avoid it
• Washed process · Natural process — how documented Chiroso lots are prepared
• Coffee scoring · Cupping — how the numbers above were arrived at
• Premiumisation — why a variety with no paperwork can still clear high prices
• Perfect Daily Grind — the trade publication behind most of the verifiable reporting here

Official links

• Official site — World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the authoritative variety register; it carries no Chiroso entry
• Official results — Cup of Excellence Colombia South 2014 (Alliance for Coffee Excellence) — the competition record naming Carmen Cecilia Montoya Patiño of Urrao at 91.31

Footnotes

1. Perfect Daily Grind — Chiroso: an up-and-coming competition coffee? — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the name meaning, the Urrao/Antioquia location, the Caturra-mutation assumption, the Ethiopian-landrace link and its “yet to be scientifically verified” caveat, Lucas Cuadros, Pedro Miguel Echavarría and the 2012 auction, Pergamino’s 40 hectares, the two Urrao types, and the agronomy and flavour descriptions ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Cup of Excellence Colombia South 2014 results — confirmed via WebFetch; official source of the top-five table, the 91.31 winning score, Carmen Cecilia Montoya Patiño / Finca Bella Vista, and the absence of any variety column ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Efico — Chiroso: Colombia’s competition standout — green importer; source of the 2014 Cup of Excellence retelling, the 2024 chloroplast-genome paper attribution, the “over 85 points” claim and the Huila “Chiroso Imperial” washed lot; the page could not be read in full when fetched here ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

4. The Coffee Quest — The story of Chiroso — confirmed via WebFetch; exporter account; source of the Betulia oral history, the 2014 Doña Carmen framing, the Caturra Chiroso naming and the 1,800–2,000 m range ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Sweet Maria’s Coffee Library — Chiroso — green retailer library; source of the early-2000s rediscovery and the tall Bourbon Chiroso / compact Caturra Chiroso split; returned HTTP 403 when checked here ↩

6. World Coffee Research — Arabica variety catalogue — confirmed via WebFetch; the catalogue index, which lists no Chiroso; the direct Chiroso URL returned HTTP 404 ↩

7. Roastmasters — Colombia Finca La Fortuna Chiroso — green retailer listing; sole source of the unverified 2024 Best of Panama 94.13 claim, and of the Finca La Fortuna / Maximiliano Vargas 2,100 m Urrao details; returned HTTP 403 when checked here ↩ ↩²

8. JBC Coffee Roasters — El Proceso Chiroso — roaster page; sole source of the Tolima planting claim ↩

9. World Coffee Index — Chiroso — variety reference site; source of the white florals / honey / lemon / black tea descriptors and the low-yield framing ↩ ↩²

10. Best of Panama 2025 auction — Canvas of Terroir official results — official auction record behind this wiki’s Best of Panama results archive; source of the V-02 Chiroso placing, 92.63 score, 1,330/lb and 26,600 total ↩ ↩²