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The Legendary Bourbon Pointu: A Coffee Story

Earlier this month, I took part in a cupping session featuring Bourbon Pointu coffee beans from Reunion Island.

"Bourbon Pointu from Reunion Island" - to most people these words mean nothing, but to any coffee enthusiast they would make the heart race and the blood quicken. Why?

Over the past decade or so, two legendary coffee varieties have emerged and sent shockwaves through the coffee world: Geisha and Bourbon Pointu. Geisha coffee deserves a detailed story of its own another time; this article, riding on the impressions left by the cupping, wants to share the legend of Bourbon Pointu. But before discussing it, we must first clarify a few matters related to coffee varieties - otherwise readers may find the sensation caused by Bourbon Pointu hard to believe.

The coffee we usually drink - whether Arabica (Coffea arabica), Canephora (Coffea canephora, commonly known as Robusta), or the rarer Liberica (Coffea liberica) - belongs botanically to the Rubiaceae family, genus Coffea. The genus Coffea contains many species, with over a hundred recorded, but so far only two major species truly matter: Arabica and Robusta. Roughly 3/4 of the world's coffee comes from Arabica and 1/4 from Robusta; together they account for about 98% of total production, with the remaining nearly 2% being Liberica.

People pursuing quality coffee naturally focus on Arabica, for a simple reason: although growing Arabica does not guarantee good flavor, all high-quality coffee - including every specialty coffee - falls within the Arabica category, while Robusta is generally classed as commercial-grade beans.

Arabica is itself a large family with many members, of which the two most influential in the coffee world are Bourbon and Typica. The reason is historical: coffee was once an Arab monopoly, and to preserve that exclusivity the Arabs absolutely refused to let viable seeds leave their native land. By the 17th century, however, seeds were eventually smuggled to the wider world, where they branched out and propagated countless descendants - the Bourbon and Typica lines. Through natural mutation, interspecific crossing, and deliberate breeding, many new varieties later emerged, such as Caturra, Catuai, Pacas, Maragogype, Pacamara, SL28, SL34, and a long list of others. It is fair to say that most of the Arabica coffee we drink today descends from those early Bourbon and Typica lines.

Bourbon coffee got its name from the place it was first widely cultivated in the wider world - the island then called Bourbon Island, today's Reunion; and the legendary protagonist of this article, Bourbon Pointu, is a natural mutation of Bourbon coffee on that island.

Bourbon Pointu has two other names - Laurina and Leroy - but none as famous as Bourbon Pointu. It is called Pointu ("pointed") because its beans are narrow and long with pointed ends, while the original Bourbon (some call it Round Bourbon) has shorter, more elliptical beans. The difference in appearance between Bourbon Pointu and original Bourbon can be seen at a glance in Figure 1 and Figure 2; their biggest difference, however, lies not in looks but in flavor and caffeine content. To describe Bourbon Pointu in the simplest terms: it tastes wonderful, and it is low in caffeine.

Figure 1. Bourbon Pointu

Figure 2. Original Bourbon (Round Bourbon)

I will come to flavor shortly, but first let us talk about caffeine. According to statistical data, the caffeine content of ordinary coffee beans is 0.9-1.2% for Arabica and 1.6-2.4% for Robusta, while Bourbon Pointu contains only 0.6% - far below ordinary Arabica and lower still than Robusta. Although it has not reached the standard of American decaffeinated coffee, it is welcome news for anyone who loves coffee but cannot handle much caffeine.

Thanks to its fine flavor and low caffeine (it hardly disturbs sleep), Bourbon Pointu was adored as early as the 18th century; celebrities such as the French King Louis XV and the novelist Balzac counted themselves among its "fans." During the two hundred years from the 18th to the 19th century, Bourbon Pointu was widely cultivated on Bourbon Island, peaking at 4,000 metric tons a year around 1800. Then disaster struck - hurricanes, fire ants, coffee leaf rust - and cultivation gradually dwindled. Finally, in 1942, the last shipment of Bourbon Pointu sent back to France amounted to a pitiful 200 kilograms, and after that it vanished without a trace, unmentioned even in official documents. After the 1950s no one on Reunion grew coffee anymore; the island's agriculture turned entirely to crops such as sugarcane. Coffee and Reunion were no longer connected, and Bourbon Pointu was officially deemed "extinct" by the coffee world.

The reappearance of Bourbon Pointu is the legend this article wants to tell, and the author of that legend deserves credit: a Japanese coffee expert, Yoshiaki Kawashima.

Mr. Kawashima was born in 1956. Because his father ran a coffee roasting business, he grew up surrounded by coffee. After graduating from high school in 1975, his father sent him to El Salvador, where the family had business connections, to study economics at university. But Kawashima's real passion was coffee, not economics, so he spent most of his time researching coffee and even abandoned his economics studies to learn coffee at the National Coffee Research Institute. When his father found out, he angrily cut off Kawashima's allowance. Undeterred, Kawashima paid his way by doing translation work, working part-time while studying coffee - until 1981, when El Salvador plunged into civil war and, aged 25, he returned to Japan.

During his years in El Salvador, Kawashima had heard about Bourbon Pointu from the experts at the National Coffee Research Institute. Although every expert believed the variety extinct, he clung to the hope that "perhaps it could still be found."

After returning to Japan, he joined the UCC coffee company, working in its agricultural research division and overseeing UCC's overseas cultivation sites (including Jamaica, Hawaii, and Sumatra). In 1999, on a business trip to East Africa, he took the opportunity to visit nearby Reunion Island and asked locals to accompany him in searching for any surviving Bourbon Pointu. He discovered that many young people on the island did not even know Reunion had once been an important coffee-producing region, or that the famous "Bourbon" variety originated there. According to Kawashima's recollection, at one point a young man even took him to a supermarket, thinking the coffee beans he was looking for were on the shelves.

After a short and fruitless search, Kawashima returned to Japan in disappointment, convinced his dream had died. But two years later, a local veterinarian who had helped with the search found 30 coffee trees growing in the wild and immediately notified him. Kawashima rushed to Reunion and, after identification, confirmed that these 30 trees were indeed Bourbon Pointu. Finally, with cooperation between UCC and the French authorities, five years of restoration work bore preliminary fruit in 2007: 700 kilograms of green coffee. UCC carefully selected 240 kilograms to ship back to Japan, roasted them and sold them in 100-gram units - 2,000 units in all - at a "sky-high price" of 7,360 yen per unit (over 2,000 New Taiwan dollars!), and they sold out immediately. The following year the price rose to 8,750 yen per unit, and some coffee shops poured single cups for connoisseurs at 5,250 yen. Mr. Kawashima, who started the legend and brought Bourbon Pointu back to the world, left UCC in the very year of its release (2007), founded his own company, and established Japan's Sustainable Coffee Association.

The Bourbon Pointu cupping I attended earlier this month is a small continuation of that story, and its origins trace back to 2007 as well. That was the year I learned Bourbon Pointu had been released in Japan, and I tried every possible way to have friends or acquaintances traveling between Japan and here bring some back. I failed not only in 2007 but for several consecutive years - until last year.

Here is what happened: a few years ago I asked a Mr. Liu, who is deeply devoted to coffee, to help track down this world-famous Bourbon Pointu; after all, coffee professionals have far more channels than private hobbyists. Last summer, by a fortunate coincidence, Mr. Liu traded a small batch of Bourbon Pointu for some renowned Geisha competition lots, finally letting our tasting circle fulfill its long-held wish to taste Bourbon Pointu. Unfortunately, that batch came not from Reunion but from Colombia (one wonders how the seeds ever crossed the ocean). The flavor was indeed good, but it did not quite match the archival description of "bright acidity, blueberry and vanilla notes, a velvet-like smoothness." Agricultural products are inseparable from the natural conditions of their origin - soil, sunlight, rainfall, temperature; change any of them and the final taste changes too. So last year I asked Mr. Liu once more to track down authentic Reunion Bourbon Pointu. Heaven rewards the persistent: this year he finally accomplished the difficult task, and within a month or two after the cupping, this "Bourbon Pointu from Reunion Island" will arrive at our club. Whether the slightly imperfect acidity, aroma, and smoothness we experienced at the cupping can be beautifully coaxed out by more careful roasting remains to be seen once the beans arrive. When UCC sold this bean, they used a touching slogan:

A delicious luxury, once a year

That slogan drew customers in search of Bourbon Pointu - and our tasting club has finally waited out this long-overdue luxury.

Bourbon Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted Brazilian natural Yellow Bourbon coffee beans carry full assurance in both brand and quality, and they represent excellent value for money - a conscientious recommendation compared with coffee shops that charge tens of yuan per cup.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Bourbon Pointu's story - a legendary variety brought back from the brink - is matched in modern coffee lore only by Geisha, the other variety that took the coffee world by storm. If the rare and the floral appeal to you, FrontStreet offers several ways in: the entry-level Panama Boquete Geisha, which lets you taste classic Panamanian orange-blossom honey sweetness, oolong-tea notes, and delicate fruit acidity at an accessible price, or the Esmeralda Green Label Geisha, blended from several high-altitude estate lots to showcase the estate's signature Geisha character.

For a lighter-priced floral option, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy combines Costa Rican honey-processed coffee with washed Panamanian Geisha - a blend with both refined florals and sweet fruit character that works as pour-over, moka pot, machine brewing, or even a refreshing cold brew (30g of coarsely ground beans - EK43 setting 9, hand-grinder C40 setting 24 - steeped in 360g of room-temperature water at a 1:12 ratio, refrigerated 8 hours, filtered, then rested 3 more hours for flavors of grape juice, rose, sweet orange, and fruit wine).

As for brewing Geisha-style beans: use a medium-light roast ground coarse - about 78% pass-through on a Chinese-standard #20 sieve (roughly fine granulated sugar) - water at 91 degrees, 15g of coffee with a Hario V60 at a 1:16 ratio, poured in three stages: 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then small circular pours to 125g, and finally to 225g, for a total extraction of about 2 minutes 10 seconds to 2 minutes 20 seconds.

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