Coffee Sketcher

Guayabita

Properties3
descriptionA coffee variety found growing wild on Finca Sophia in Panama, named by the farm and grown nowhere else — tiny round beans, unknown parentage, and no independent genetic confirmation.
tagsvariety, panama, finca-sophia
aliasesGuayabita variety, Finca Sophia Guayabita

6 min read

Guayabita

Guayabita is a coffee variety that nobody planted. The farm Finca Sophia, high in Panama’s Chiriquí highlands, says it simply found the plants growing on its own land more than a decade ago, and has never been able to explain how they got there (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch). The farm gave it a name — guayabita is Spanish for “little guava” — and kept growing it.

It is, in the strict sense, a farm-named variety: a plant a grower identified and christened themselves, rather than one released by a breeding programme. That distinction matters for how much weight you put on anything said about it, and it is the reason this note flags more than it states.

What it looks like and how it grows

The one physical detail the farm publishes is the bean: very small and round, which stands out sharply next to the long, pointed beans of Geisha growing beside it on the same farm (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).

That is a genuinely useful marker. Bean shape is one of the few things you can judge with your eyes rather than a lab, and small round beans are a common signature of Ethiopian-descended plants — which is consistent with, though not proof of, the ancestry the farm claims below.

Finca Sophia sits at roughly 1,900–2,130 metres, which is punishing ground for coffee: cold, slow-ripening, and hard on the plants. The farm describes Guayabita as having thrived there, calling it both resilient and prolific (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch). A variety that yields well at 2,000 metres is unusual — most coffee trades yield away for cup quality at that altitude.

Lineage

The farm’s stated genetics are a single sentence: Guayabita is “genetically similar to the Ethiopian cultivar 74110” (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).

74110 is one of the numbered Ethiopian selections — plants pulled from Ethiopia’s wild and semi-wild coffee forests and catalogued by number rather than given a name. If the resemblance is real, Guayabita would be an escapee from that lineage rather than anything bred in the Americas, which would explain the small round beans and the vigour.

But “genetically similar to” is not a lab result, and the farm does not say who tested it, when, or against what reference. Treat the 74110 link as the farm’s best guess about its own plant. See the To-verify callout below.

What it tastes like

The farm does not publish tasting notes for Guayabita on its own. It says only that the variety “offers a cup profile that beautifully complements both Geisha and Catuai” — the two other varieties it grows at scale (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch). Read plainly, that is a blending statement, not a flavour description: Guayabita earns its place by rounding out the farm’s range rather than by tasting like any one thing.

No cupping score, competition result, or auction price for a Guayabita lot turned up in any source consulted for this note.

Why you have probably never seen it

Guayabita is grown on one farm. Finca Sophia calls it “our exclusive farm discovery” (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch), and it is not in the World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the closest thing the industry has to an official register of varieties (checked 2026-07-23 via WebFetch; the catalogue carries no Guayabita entry and no 74110 entry either).

That puts it in the same bracket as Enigma, Finca Sophia’s other unregistered find, and it is a normal state of affairs in Panama, where farms routinely name plants they discover on their own land. It also means the variety exists commercially only as long as one farm keeps planting it.

To verify — the 74110 genetics

The claim that Guayabita is genetically similar to Ethiopian cultivar 74110 comes from one source: the farm that sells it (Finca Sophia, accessed 2026-07-23). No testing laboratory, method, or date is named, and no independent genetic analysis was found. The World Coffee Research Arabica catalogue contains no entry for Guayabita and none for 74110 either (checked 2026-07-23 via WebFetch), so it cannot be used to corroborate the link or to describe 74110’s own background. Details commonly repeated elsewhere about 74110 — that it is a 1970s Ethiopian forest selection with rust tolerance — were not confirmed for this note. Do not state the 74110 ancestry as established fact.

To verify — a second, conflicting use of the name

A retailer lot sold by Archer’s Coffee as “Panama — Finca Ponderosa Guayabita SF DRD” attributes the coffee to Ponderosa Coffee Estate in Cordillera, Chiriquí, producers Gilberto Cardoze and Edgar Gutierrez, at 1,400–1,700 m (Archer’s Coffee, cited in the research report; the page returned HTTP 429 and could not be fetched here). Crucially, that listing gives the variety as Geisha, not Guayabita — so on that farm “Guayabita” appears to be a lot, plot or parcel name, not this variety. Same word, different meaning, different estate. Do not merge the two without confirming directly with either farm.

To verify — not to be confused with

Guaya’b is an association of smallholder farms in Huehuetenango, Guatemala (InterAmerican Coffee, cited in the research report, not fetched here). Despite the similar name it has no established connection to the Panamanian Guayabita variety.

Sources

  1. Finca Sophia — the coffee — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. World Coffee Research — Arabica variety catalogue — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. SCAP Panama — Finca Sophia producer profile — accessed 2026-07-23
  4. Equator Coffees — Finca Sophia — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. Archer’s Coffee — Panama, Finca Ponderosa Guayabita SF DRD — cited 2026-07-23, page returned HTTP 429 and was not fetched
  6. InterAmerican Coffee — Guatemala Guaya’b — cited 2026-07-23, not fetched

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