Chloé Cà Phê Special Lot — Thy Thy Farm Natural Starmaya Coffee Beans | Cầu Đất, Đà Lạt, Việt Nam

Technical Sheet

Starmaya is one of the rarest things you can put in a coffee bag, and almost nobody in America has tasted it grown in Việt Nam.

It is an F1 hybrid — the first generation of a cross between two genetically distant parents, where the offspring outperform both. In coffee, F1 hybrids have long been the "best of the best": exceptional cup quality paired with disease resistance and yield. The catch was always access. Traditional F1s can only be reproduced through tissue culture or somatic embryogenesis in a handful of high-tech laboratory nurseries worldwide, which puts them permanently out of reach for the vast majority of the world's coffee farmers.

Starmaya broke that barrier. In 2001, researchers at CIRAD identified a male-sterile Arabica plant of Ethiopian/Sudanese wild origin held in the CATIE gene bank. Because that mother plant produces no pollen of its own, every cherry it sets must be fertilized by a neighbor. Breeders planted it alongside Marsellesa — a rust-resistant variety descended from Timor Hybrid 832/2 crossed with Villa Sarchi CIFC 971/10 — and let wind and insects do the rest. Every seed that resulted was a true F1 hybrid, pollinated in an open field rather than a laboratory. After trials in Nicaragua, ECOM released it to the world. It remains the first and only F1 Arabica hybrid propagated by seed.

What that means in the cup: Starmaya carries the leaf-rust resistance and structure of Marsellesa, and the wild, aromatic complexity of its Ethiopian-lineage mother. It is a variety bred for the future of coffee farming that happens to taste like the past of it.

Sourced directly from Thy Thy Farm in Trạm Hành, Cầu Đất, this lot is deeply personal to us. Thy Thy, a second-generation farmer and coffee producer, has been with us since the very beginning, believing in our vision for Vietnamese specialty coffee from day one. She has committed to not rushing for high-yield crops, and to never prioritize monetary benefits over the well-being of the soil. Since 2018 her farm has run without chemical fertilizers or pesticides — just two hectares in the Cầu Đất hills, rebuilt slowly with organic and microbial inputs into a living, diverse ecosystem.

Planting Starmaya is exactly the kind of decision that defines her. It would have been easier to keep filling the farm with what already works. Instead she gave her land to a variety most Vietnamese producers have never grown, on the belief that Việt Nam deserves to be part of the global conversation about what coffee can be — not just how much of it we can ship. We support her because she is one of many producers working tirelessly to prove what Vietnamese coffee is truly capable of. She supports us because she trusts us not to treat that work as another commodity, but to honor it, the land it came from, and the people behind it — and to roast it with care.

This lot was grown at 1,550 meters in the misty highlands of Cầu Đất. The chilly mountain air forces the cherries to mature slowly, allowing them to build dense natural sugars over time. After hand-harvesting, the whole cherries underwent the Natural process — left intact and dried with the fruit still on, so the green bean inside absorbs the sugars and fruit character of its own cherry, yielding a heavier body and distinct berry and wine-like notes.

Rather than laying them out in open sun, Thy Thy dries hers in a controlled low-temperature, low-humidity environment. The slower, gentler moisture curve prevents the over-fermentation and boozy heaviness that naturals can fall into, and preserves the delicate aromatics that make Starmaya worth growing in the first place. From there, we roast it ourselves in America to protect that clarity.

How we brew it

Pour Over (V60 / Kalita) — The definitive way to meet this coffee. The layered fruit and floral aromatics of the Ethiopian lineage come through cleanest here.

Drip — A bright, naturally sweet, fruit-forward cup that makes an ordinary morning feel deliberate.

Cold Brew — The low-temp drying yields a cold brew that is exceptionally smooth, tea-like, and honey-sweet.

The Specialty Evolution: We are proud to showcase the diversity of Việt Nam. From our Fine Robusta to a variety this rare, we invite you to explore the full spectrum of our land — where tradition meets modern specialty standards.