Batangas and Cavite (Barako)

Kapeng barako is the Philippines’ own coffee tradition: liberica, a separate species from arabica and robusta, grown in the provinces of Batangas and Cavite, south of Manila. It makes a strong, pungent cup that many Filipinos prefer to arabica, but it has become scarce, and Slow Food lists it as an endangered heritage food.

The short version

• Liberica, not arabica or robusta.
• Batangas and Cavite, first planted around Lipa.
• Strong and pungent, with an aniseed-like fragrance.
• Trees up to 20 metres, picked from ladders, at about 300–500 metres.
• Scarce: 58.82 tonnes of dried liberica cherry in all of CALABARZON in 2020.

What does kapeng barako taste like?

Strong, robust and pungent. The descriptions agree:

Source	Description
Slow Food (Ark of Taste)	Strong taste and flavour with a distinctively pungent aroma; drunk black or with sugar or honey, alone or blended
Philippine Coffee Board	A distinctively robust and powerful cup
Wikipedia	A strong flavour and a fragrance reminiscent of aniseed; said to be superior to robusta, and preferred by most Philippine coffee drinkers to arabica

Blends of arabica or excelsa with barako are popular and give a broader range of flavour, Wikipedia says.

Where and how is it grown?

Barako was originally planted in the lowlands of Lipa, Batangas, and spread through the province, Wikipedia says; in 1876 the first liberica seedlings were planted at Amadeo, Cavite, according to the Philippine Coffee Board. Slow Food puts the trees at about 300 metres; the Coffee Board gives 300 to 500 metres for the coffee of CALABARZON, the region that includes both provinces, where robusta, excelsa and liberica are grown. The national harvest runs from October to March.

The tree is unusual: self-pollinating and up to 20 metres tall, with cherries larger than arabica’s and asymmetric beans, one side lower than the other, ending in a hook, with a jagged rather than straight centre cut, Slow Food says. Pickers use ladders, and the trees’ size makes them less efficient to grow and harvest than other coffees, so most modern farmers have planted robusta instead, Wikipedia says.

How much barako is grown?

Very little. The government’s coffee roadmap gives CALABARZON’s 2020 figures:

Measure	2020
Area, all coffee	13,196 ha
Production, all coffee	1,272.12 t dried cherry (636.06 t green)
Robusta	895.01 t dried cherry
Excelsa	318.29 t dried cherry
Liberica	58.82 t dried cherry

Source: PSA, via the Department of Agriculture’s Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap 2021–2025.

A short history

Date	Event	Source
18th century	Barako first planted in Batangas by Spanish friars	Slow Food
By the 1800s	Coffee grows in Lipa, Batangas, encouraged by Augustinian friars	Philippine Coffee Board
Mid-1850s	Batangas exports coffee to America and Australia	Philippine Coffee Board
1876	Liberica planted at Amadeo, Cavite	Philippine Coffee Board; Wikipedia
1877	Lipa’s harvest peaks at 70,000 picos	Batangas History
1889–1899	Insects, rust and blight wreck Batangas coffee	Philippine Coffee Board; Batangas History

Historians disagree on what Lipa’s boom was built on: Wikipedia ties it to barako, while the Batangas History site argues that the 19th-century boom was arabica and that barako spread later. In the 19th century the Philippines was at one point the world’s fourth-largest coffee producer, Slow Food says.

Barako and other Philippine origins

• Coffee in the Philippines: the whole country, its four species and its history.
• Benguet: the Cordillera’s heritage arabica, also on the Ark of Taste.
• Johor: liberica’s other stronghold, in Malaysia.