Mokkita

Mokkita is a coffee variety grown at one farm on earth: Mama Cata, the Garrido family’s estate in Boquete, Panama.¹²³⁴ It makes very small cherries and very small beans, which is why it is named after Mokka — the historic tiny-bean coffee type associated with Yemen and, later, Hawaii.²³⁴

It matters for one reason. Panama’s flagship competition, Best of Panama, is dominated by Geisha; everything else competes in a quieter category that rarely produces headlines. Mokkita entered that category in 2020, won it outright, and won it again in 2021 — and then a roasted Mokkita lot scored 97 points at Coffee Review, a number normally reserved for Geisha.¹⁵²

What makes it different

Three things, and they are all about size and scarcity.

Tiny fruit. The cherries are unusually small, in the Mokka style.²³⁴ Small cherry means small bean, and small beans are awkward to process and roast evenly — the trade-off growers accept for the cup.

Almost no yield. Paradise Roasters, which buys the lot, says a Mokkita tree produces less than half the cherry of a Geisha or Typica tree.² Coffee farming is a volume business at every level except the very top, so a plant that yields half of Geisha only survives if it cups like this one does.

About two hectares exist. Mama Cata has roughly 2 hectares (5 acres) planted to Mokkita.² For scale, that is a rounding error on a 50-hectare estate, and the whole world’s supply.

The result is one of the rarest commercially traded coffees anywhere — closer in status to Guayabita or Enigma (other one-farm Panamanian finds) than to a variety you can buy seed for.

How it is grown and processed

Every Mokkita lot documented in this note is natural — dried whole, inside its own fruit, rather than washed clean of it first.¹⁵²³ Paradise Roasters describes the drying as small batches dried slowly over about a month on raised screens inside a greenhouse;² Coffee Review calls it “a particularly meticulous version of the dried-in-the-fruit natural method.”¹

The plots sit at Mama Cata’s Alto Quiel ground in Boquete, which the family gives as 1,500–1,750 m.⁵ Mama Cata also grows Caturra, Catuaí, Typica and Geisha alongside it.

Competition and auction record

	Year	Result	Score
1	2020	Best of Panama, XXIV edition — 1st place, traditional natural / non-Geisha category5	91 final; 93 from one international judge5
2	2021	Best of Panama — highest-scoring non-Geisha again2	see To-verify below
3	Nov 2021	Coffee Review rating, roasted by Paradise Roasters1	97

The 2020 win was the variety’s competition debut — it had never been entered before.⁵ The Coffee Review panel described the cup blind as “aromatically other-worldly,” with caramelised pineapple, orchid, pistachio, raw chocolate and oolong tea, over a syrupy body.¹ Panama’s own press described it more simply as white, red and purple fruit with nuts and herbal notes.⁵ See Coffee scoring for what a 97 actually means.

On price, Paradise Roasters states that a Mokkita lot fetched $400 per pound of green coffee at auction — the highest ever paid for a non-Geisha variety anywhere.² That is a buyer’s own claim on its own sales page rather than a published auction record; see the flag below.

Where it came from — genuinely unsettled

This is the interesting part, and the honest answer is that nobody outside the farm has published a definitive one.

• It is not in the official register. The World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the closest thing the industry has to a register of varieties — carries no entry for Mokkita, Mokka, or Panama Mokka.⁶ That is normal for a farm-discovered Panamanian plant, but it means there is no neutral reference description to check anything against.
• One lab result has been reported. Paradise Roasters says genetic testing by the French laboratory RD2 Vision suggests Mokkita is a hybrid of a Bourbon-type variety and Geisha.² If true, that would make it a spontaneous cross rather than a Yemeni Mokka descendant, and would explain both the tiny bean (Bourbon-type compactness) and the floral cup (Geisha).
• Other sellers say the opposite, or say nothing. Proud Mary Coffee states plainly that little is known about Mokkita’s lineage.³ Dragonfly Coffee Roasters has said World Coffee Research verified it as a unique Coffea arabica genotype.⁴

Those three positions cannot all stand as written. See below.

To verify — the genetics

Claim A: Paradise Roasters says a French lab, RD2, found Mokkita to be a Bourbon × Geisha hybrid.² No report, date or accession number is published, and the claim appears on the roaster’s own sales page. Claim B: Dragonfly Coffee Roasters has said World Coffee Research verified Mokkita as a unique genotype.⁴ Checked directly: the WCR Arabica variety catalogue has no Mokkita entry at all,⁶ so this claim is not supported by WCR’s own published catalogue. (WCR runs genetic-fingerprinting services separately from the catalogue, so a private test is possible — but it is not what the public catalogue shows.) The Dragonfly product page cited for it now returns a 404 and could not be re-read. Claim C: Proud Mary Coffee says the lineage is simply unknown.³ Do not state any of the three as settled fact.

To verify — when and how it was found

The engine report for this note cites Dragonfly Coffee Roasters saying the Garrido family first discovered Mokkita in 2005.⁴ The Mama Cata note in this wiki instead records it as spotted in 2008 by the Japanese taster Mamoru Taguchi of Tokyo’s Cafe Bach, during a private cupping — found in the cup by a visitor, not selected in the field.⁵ These are different dates and different discoverers. Both are single-source. Unresolved.

To verify — the 2021 score and category name

Dragonfly Coffee Roasters reports the 2021 lot averaged 93 points from 18 international jurors in a category it calls “Varietals Natural,” and calls that the highest score ever recorded at the time for a non-Geisha.⁴ The Mama Cata note records the 2021 result as 92 points, from a different trade source. Meanwhile the 2020 category is variously called “traditional,” “traditional natural,” and “traditional natural coffees and with processes.”⁵ Best of Panama publishes no browsable archive of past results, so none of the scores or the official category label could be checked against primary competition records.

To verify — the $400/lb auction price

The $400 per pound figure and the “highest ever for a non-Geisha” superlative come from Paradise Roasters’ own product page.² No lot number, auction year or official Best of Panama / SCAP auction document was found to confirm it, and the Mama Cata note currently records no published auction price for any lot from that farm. Treat the number as a seller’s claim until a primary auction record surfaces.

To verify — the "Panama Mokka" name

The Japanese variety site Real-Coffee is cited as saying Panama Mokka is the Garrido family’s variety and is also called Mokkita.⁷ The page could not be read on fetch (it returned navigation only), so the equivalence of the two names rests on that single uncorroborated citation. The name is kept as an alias here, not asserted as an official synonym.

Related

• Mama Cata — the only farm that grows it
• Best of Panama · SCAP · Green coffee auctions — the competition and auction it made its name in
• Geisha · Bourbon · Typica · Caturra · Catuaí — the varieties it is compared to or grows beside
• Guayabita · Enigma — the other one-farm Panamanian varieties with unproven lineage
• Natural process — how every documented Mokkita lot is dried
• Coffee scoring · Cupping · Coffee Review — how the 97 was arrived at
• Paradise Roasters · Proud Mary Coffee · Dragonfly Coffee Roasters — roasters that have sold it
• Cafe Bach — the Tokyo roaster whose founder is credited with spotting it
• Panama — the country

Official links

• Official site — World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the authoritative variety register; note that it carries no Mokkita entry
• Official site — Garrido Specialty Coffee, the grower’s own site (see Garrido Specialty Coffee Roasters); it lists Mokkita as a variety but there is no official variety registration anywhere

Footnotes

1. Coffee Review — Mama Cata Mokkita, roasted by Paradise Roasters (97 points, November 2021) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. Paradise Roasters — Panama Mokkita + Kona Mokka Duo ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

3. Proud Mary Coffee — LIMITED, Panama, Mama Cata, Mokkita, Natural ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Dragonfly Coffee Roasters — Mokkita Grand Cru 2021 Auction Lot, Mojave Vault Oak Barrel Aged — page returned 404 when re-checked for this note ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

5. The Visitor Panama — Garrido Specialty Coffee Roasters: coffee tradition of international success ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

6. World Coffee Research — Arabica variety catalogue — checked directly; contains no entry for Mokkita, Mokka or Panama Mokka ↩ ↩²

7. Real-Coffee — コーヒーの品種：パナマ・モカ（モキータ） ↩