2024 Best Panama BOP Multi-Breed Champion Chiroso Breed Introduction

In recent years, the demand for some new varieties of coffee has increased in the coffee market, and in some large-scale competitions, some contestants choose new varieties to compete, and make this variety popular, such as the recent popularity of sidra.

More recently, Panama hosted the 28th Best Panama Competition (Bast Of Panama, or BOP) in 2024, which was divided into three categories: Washed Geisha, Natural Geisha and Varietals.

Among them, it is worth noting that in the multi-variety category in 2024, the winner with a score of 94.1 was Chiroso from Black Moon Farm. Chiroso began to appear in the public eye in the past two years. In the 2023 BOP competition, Chiroso, then also Black Moon Farm, won the second place in the breed group with a score of 91.88.

It is understood that the Chiroso variety originally came from Colombia, although it comes from Colombia, but it is not a variety cultivated by the Colombian National Coffee Research Center. The variety was first found in Urrao, Antioquia province in northern Colombia, which is the birthplace of Colombian coffee, an important coffee producing area and the largest coffee growing area, with small producers as well as large estates.

And, in 2014, Chiroso won the championship in Colombia's COE, and third and 11th places were also the variety, and then other estates in Colombia began to introduce cultivation, and by 2021, Colombia's COE also had a large number of Chiroso varieties, which were later introduced to Panama.

At first, Chiroso was considered a natural variety of Kaddura, but the cherry fruit of this variety was slender in shape, so it was named Chiroso (Colombian slang for something slightly elongated).

But later, some research institutions found that Chiroso was not genetically linked to the bourbon variety, suggesting that it was not a variety of Chiloso, but these studies found that Chiroso was genetically linked to an Ethiopian native variety, although it is not clear how the Ethiopian native variety was introduced into Colombia.

Coffee is grown at high altitude and low temperature in Urao, Colombia. Chiroso was originally planted because of its resistance to cold climate and high yield, but now it has attracted much attention and praise because of its complex flower aroma and rich flavor characteristics.

This variety is very similar to Kaddura, both have short, light green leaves, high yield, and are vulnerable to coffee leaf rust. Chiloso bean shape is relatively sharp and long, with obvious flower aroma and fruit tone, complex acid quality, the industry evaluation of its flavor is similar to Rosa, mellow thickness is better than Rosa. And, thanks to its density, altitude of growth, and Ethiopian heredity, it can be baked deeper in baking, prolonging the Maillard stage to increase sweetness.