Bourbon is one of the oldest and finest varieties in the coffee world. Its name comes from Réunion Island off the east coast of Africa, and it later spread to Brazil and Central and South America. Today it remains an important player in specialty coffee. Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon each have their own characteristics in fruit color, flavor expression, and cultivation difficulty, and high-altitude environments give Bourbon green beans outstanding sweetness and bright acidity. This article starts with Bourbon's history and spread as well as its botanical characteristics, and combines Front Street Coffee's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon and Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon to give you a comprehensive understanding of the charm of this classic variety.

The name Bourbon comes from Bourbon Island, which is today's Réunion Island off the east coast of Africa. The island was a French possession in the seventeenth century and was called Bourbon Island until the late eighteenth century, when it changed to its current name.

Around 1860, Bourbon was introduced to the Campinas area in southern Brazil, and it then spread rapidly northward to countries in South America and Central America. After entering the nineteenth century, French missionaries also brought seeds from Bourbon Island to parishes in East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and other places. Although Bourbon is relatively susceptible to coffee diseases, some derived varieties (such as Caturra, Catuai, and Mundo Novo) as well as disease-resistant varieties gradually replaced its position, but thanks to its outstanding quality, countries such as Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia still maintain large areas of cultivation.

Bourbon has distinct morphological characteristics on the coffee tree: the internodes of the leaves are relatively close together, the fruit is rounder and shorter than Typica, and the color of the ripe berries is yellow or orange depending on the variety (pink also occurs). Bourbon green beans are almost all round, slightly smaller than Typica, and the maturation period is also later, but the yield is higher than Typica. Bourbon green beans grown at high altitudes have higher density, more prominent sweetness, and bright acidity. Although it belongs, like Typica, to the old fine varieties, Bourbon's resistance to leaf rust is stronger than that of Typica.

Front Street Coffee Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon Coffee Beans

Country: Brazil

Region: Southern Minas Gerais Altitude: 1000m Variety: Red Bourbon Processing method: Semi-washed

If you want to experience the aroma of the Bourbon variety itself, you can choose Front Street Coffee Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon. This bean uses semi-washed processing and is presented with a medium-dark roast. As a pour-over single-origin coffee, it has aromas of nuts, toasted bread, caramel, and peanut, with a balanced mouthfeel. It can also be used in various extraction methods such as a moka pot, French press, coffee machine, and siphon, with high stability, making it very suitable for daily home use.

For common Bourbon, from flowering to fruit ripening, the color gradually changes from green to slightly yellow, then red, and finally to fully ripe dark red. This fresh fruit is what people commonly call Red Bourbon. Yellow Bourbon, however, is a Bourbon variant unique to São Paulo State in Brazil. After ripening, the fruit does not turn red but instead shows orange-yellow, hence the name "Yellow Bourbon." However, its yield is extremely low, and it is not resistant to wind and rain, so it has not been widely planted.

Front Street has learned that Yellow Bourbon was discovered in 1930. Later, research by the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) showed that plants with the dominant XcXc gene pair produce red berries; plants with the recessive xcxc gene pair produce yellow berries; and in very rare cases, Xcxc plants with one dominant gene and one recessive gene produce orange berries.

Therefore, the "yellow" of Yellow Bourbon mainly comes from selection in color inheritance. Yellow Bourbon grown at high altitudes accumulates a large amount of fructose, thereby showing a sweet and juicy flavor. This variety also once almost swept the top three places in Brazil's Cup of Excellence competition for two consecutive years, becoming popular in the specialty coffee world.

At present, FrontStreet Coffee has also introduced coffee beans of the Bourbon variety, among which the most representative is the Yellow Bourbon coffee beans from Brazil's Queen Estate. This Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon from FrontStreet Coffee comes from the Mogiana region and uses semi-washed processing. In terms of flavor, it has the sweetness of sugarcane juice, black tea, and fruit, with obvious nut and chocolate notes, balanced acidity, and a bright, smooth, and delicate mouthfeel.

Front Street Coffee Brazil Queen Estate Yellow Bourbon Coffee Beans

Region: Mogiana region

Estate: Queen Estate Fazenda Rainha

Altitude: 1400–1950m

Variety: Yellow Bourbon

Processing method: Natural processing

Flavor: Nuts, chocolate, cream, peanut, sugarcane

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.