The Brew Blog

The Podium Index aggregates US coffee competition results into a single quality ranking. Here's how the leaderboard works. 

Variety, varietal, and cultivar — three words used constantly in specialty coffee. Here's what each term means, where you'll see it, and why the distinction matters.

Tarrazú coffee grows in Costa Rica's Los Santos mountains at 1,200–1,900m — the country's flagship specialty region, known for clean chocolate-and-citrus washed cups.

Gedeb coffee is Ethiopia's high-altitude frontier within the Yirgacheffe zone — jasmine, bergamot, blueberry, peach. Grown from 1,800 to 2,200 meters.

Limu coffee is Ethiopia's most overlooked washed specialty origin — forest-garden grown, wine-bodied, floral. The washed Ethiopian that isn't Yirgacheffe.

Harrar coffee is Ethiopia's ancient natural-process origin — wild blueberry, dark fruit, chocolate. Traceability is the hard part when you go to buy it.