Arabica Red Caturra
This variety did not arrive in Flores Ostmanggarai until the 1940s. The coffee beans were secretly smuggled out of Tanah Toraja (Sulawesi), evading the strict Japanese occupation forces.
A man named Pak Matias, who was from Colol, attended college in Makassar, Sulawesi, where he met his wife. She was from Toraja, a well-known coffee-growing region. Through her, Matias learned about Yellow and Red Caturra and brought the coffee back to Colol, Manggarai Timur. To smuggle the coffee, it was disguised as cigarettes and tobacco. In Manggarai, the coffee is known as Kolumbia, or Kolumbia kuning (yellow) and Kolumbia merah, since this coffee originally comes from Colombia.
Like Arabica Kartika and Juria, this coffee variety is available from our coffee farmers in Flores, East Manggarai only in limited quantities.
To distinguish Red Caturra from other coffee varieties, look for the following characteristics: The spacing between the branches is shorter than in Arabica SL-795.
