Variety record
Pink Bourbon
A name that is wrong about its own lineage, attached to lots that testing shows are often not it either.
Commonly got wrong
The name fails twice. The lineage is wrong - it is Ethiopian landrace material, not a Bourbon - and the contents are frequently not what the label says. Genetic testing of five lots sold as Pink Bourbon returned two mixed with Bourbon, two mixed with Catimor, and one pure.
Pink Bourbon is the single best argument on this site for separating a declared variety from a verified one, because it fails on both counts at once.
It is not a Bourbon
The name says Bourbon. The genetics put it with Ethiopian landrace material, in the group researchers describe as Core Ethiopia, alongside Chiroso and Sidra. It is not descended from Bourbon or Typica. A variety table keyed on the name inherits that error and hands it on to every reader.
The cup profile is the tell that should have prompted the question earlier: it reads as Ethiopian, not as a Bourbon derivative, and it always did.
The lots are frequently not it
Separately from the naming problem, testing of five commercial lots sold as Pink Bourbon found two mixed with Bourbon, two mixed with Catimor, and one that came back pure. That is a one-in-five hit rate on a name commanding a substantial premium.
This is why every variety record here carries a verification field, and why its default is “declared only”. It is not scepticism about any particular seller. It is that the coffee trade runs almost entirely on declared attributes, and a reader deciding what to pay for a name is entitled to know which kind of claim they are looking at.
Qualifications on the record
- Parentage
- Not a Bourbon. Grouped genetically with Ethiopian landrace material alongside Chiroso and Sidra.
- Typical cup
- Intensely floral and tropical, closer to an Ethiopian landrace profile than to anything in the Bourbon family - which is consistent with what the genetics say.
- What “Tested, found mixed” means here
- Testing found material the name does not cover.
Origins where it is recorded
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Colombia
The origin whose published price is not in the unit, the state, or the currency most people assume - and whose grade names describe a hierarchy that does not exist.