What is the Yellow Catuai coffee varietal?

Yellow Catuai is a colour variant of the Catuai cultivar - itself a Mundo Novo × Caturra hybrid developed by Brazil's IAC. Like Yellow Bourbon, the yellow cherry colour results from reduced anthocyanin expression. It was developed alongside Red Catuai as part of the same IAC programme.

Compact, high-yielding, and adaptable to Brazil's main coffee belt, Yellow Catuai is one of Brazil's most planted varieties by volume. Cup quality is solid and commercially reliable - moderate acidity, good sweetness, clean rounded body when grown and processed well.

In specialty contexts, Yellow Catuai appears most commonly in natural or pulped natural lots from Brazil, where processing emphasises the variety's fruit sweetness. It's not a variety that gets celebrated in the way SL-28 or Geisha do - but in a well-executed Brazilian natural, Yellow Catuai does exactly what it's supposed to do.