Arabica Moka Cau Dat Coffee Beans F2 S16+: Referring to Moka Cau Dat is like referring to a Vietnamese coffee legend, called a legend because there are two factors. One is that if it is found and harvested separately, We still believe it will be the best coffee in Vietnam. Second, because there are so few people who actually experience Moka Cau Dat to the fullest, how Moka Cau Dat tastes is almost just an oral story.

1. What Is Moka Cau Dat Coffee?

Cau Dat Moka coffee belongs to the Arabica genus, which is the Moka coffee variety associated with the Cau Dat site in Da Lat, producing the most famous Cau Dat Moka coffee product. Cau Dat area with very suitable climate, temperature, humidity, and soil conditions, similar to Brazil, so it produces a delicious and popular product called Moka Cau Dat.

Planting conditions and techniques to produce Cau Dat Moka coffee products also require strict, high technical requirements with high altitude, climate, and temperature requirements. Therefore, the output of Cau Dat Moka is not high. There is always a shortage in the market.

2. History of Moka Coffee in Vietnam

In the early 19th century, the French brought coffee trees to grow in Lam Dong. The coffee trees they grow include Typica, Bourbon, Moka, also known as Mokka, Mocha… (from now on I will call them F1 generation coffee). These F1 coffee trees are suitable for climates with altitudes of 1500m and above.

Therefore, Cau Dat, a mountainous area with an altitude of 1550m was selected for replication. Coffee at that time was mainly served to the nobility, so you also understand that these are all excellent quality varieties. But everything delicious has its price. Firstly, the yield is very low, followed by the weak body, susceptible to pests and diseases.

Later, when coffee plantations became owned by Vietnamese people, farmers gradually replaced old, diseased, and weak trees (F1 generation plants), also known as replanting, by hybridization with new coffee trees. healthier coffee, higher yield (F2 generation plants).

Until recent years, the race in yield has brought Catimor (F3 generation plants) to the throne with strong disease resistance and outstanding yield. Catimor is now available at all Arabica coffee plantations throughout Vietnam. And it can be said that over 99% of the coffee appearing on the Vietnamese market is Catimor.

In the group of F1 plants, Moka is the weakest plant, worse than that, the size of Moka seeds is very small like a pea. Ripe Moka seeds are even smaller or equal to the young green seeds of high-yielding varieties.

When harvested together with other varieties, Moka seeds reduce the value of the whole lot because smaller seeds are charged less. That is the reason why F1 plants are now rare, Moka seeds are even rarer.

Somewhere in some coffee plantations in Cau Dat, Da Lat, there are still a few single Moka trees left, meaning as a souvenir of the farmers left after the replanting. A healthy Moka tree (which is quite unlikely) gives an annual yield of 1-2kg of seeds. That production is too small to be processed separately, plus very few people really recognize and distinguish the ancient breed like Moka.