Mt. Apo Honey Catimor

Mount Apo — at 2,954 metres the highest mountain in the Philippines — dominates the skyline of Davao del Sur, an old volcano whose forested slopes shelter the critically endangered Philippine Eagle. In the town of Bansalan at its foot, Janet Escalera grows Catimor at 1,650–1,700 masl, among the highest coffee elevations in the country, where cherries ripen slowly into density and sweetness.

Catimor — a rust-resistant Caturra–Timor hybrid — is the workhorse of Philippine coffee, too often dismissed by the specialty world. La Escalera's answer is this honey lot: cherries pulped and sun-dried with their sticky mucilage layer intact, building a syrupy body of nutty cocoa, chocolate and brown spice over dried fruit. It carried the farm into the Top 7 of the 2025 Philippine Coffee Quality Competition, scoring 82.17.