Variety record
Bourbon
The other founding lineage - named after an island, and the yardstick most other varieties are measured against.
Commonly got wrong
BOURBON IS A PLACE, and not the one people assume. It is the former name of Reunion in the Indian Ocean - nothing to do with the American whiskey or with Kentucky. And the colour prefixes are separate selections: Yellow Bourbon arose in Brazil and is not simply Bourbon that ripens differently.
Bourbon and Typica are the two lineages nearly all cultivated arabica in the Americas descends from, and Bourbon is the one that most modern breeding is built on.
The island, not the whiskey
Bourbon is the former name of Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. Coffee carried there from Yemen developed distinctly from the material that went to India and Java, and it entered the Americas by a separate route. The name records a shipping history, and it is regularly assumed to be American.
The colours are separate selections
Yellow Bourbon, Red Bourbon and Orange Bourbon are not one variety photographed at different moments. Yellow Bourbon arose in Brazil and is understood to involve a cross with another yellow-fruited population; the others are distinct selections. Treating cherry colour as a ripeness stage rather than a varietal attribute is a common error and it puts three things in one row.
Why it keeps appearing in pedigrees
Caturra is a dwarf mutation of Bourbon. Pacas is a dwarf mutation of Bourbon. Mundo Novo is a Bourbon-Typica cross, and Catuai is Mundo Novo crossed with Caturra. A very large share of what is planted across Latin America is Bourbon with something done to its height.
Qualifications on the record
- Parentage
- The second founding cultivated arabica lineage, carried from Yemen to the island then called Bourbon, now Reunion
- Typical cup
- Rounder and sweeter than Typica, with more body and a softer acidity. The reference point most other Latin American varieties are described against.
- What “Declared only” means here
- Nobody has tested it. This is the normal state of almost every coffee sold.
Origins where it is recorded
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Brazil
The origin that moves the benchmark - and whose most famous name on a bag is a shipping port.
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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.
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Guatemala
Eight named regions, an altitude ladder with seven rungs, and a naming system that is a framework rather than an appellation.
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Honduras
A top competition lot at $28.40 a pound - nine times the C market, and a seventh of what the same season paid in Costa Rica.