Castillo

Castillo is the most-planted material in Colombia and the clearest example on this site of a trade name that covers many distinct things.

It is a composite, and deliberately so

Castillo General is a release of around thirty-five lines. Beneath it sit Castillo Regionales, and then three Castillo Zonales – Norte, Centro and Sur – each selected for the conditions of a part of the country. Cenicafe is explicit that composite varieties are not phenotypically uniform. That is not a defect in the release; it is the design. Genetic breadth within the population is what makes it durable against a pathogen that adapts.

The consequence for a reference table is that one row labelled “Castillo” silently collapses a dozen distinct releases. We hold the composite count on the record and treat the individual lines as a dimension we do not yet have data for, rather than pretending the name resolves to a single plant.

The cup reputation is dated

Introgressed varieties – those carrying Timor Hybrid material for rust resistance – earned a reputation for cupping poorly, and much of that reputation was earned honestly by earlier releases. Applying it to current Castillo plantings is a different claim, and one the competition results do not support.

Qualifications on the record

Parentage

Caturra x Timor Hybrid, through the Colombia variety programme

Typical cup

Clean and sweet when picked ripe and processed well; the reputation for flat cups largely predates current pickings and processing.

What “Declared only” means here

Nobody has tested it. This is the normal state of almost every coffee sold.

Origins where it is recorded