Is Pink Bourbon Not Bourbon Coffee? What Is Pink Bourbon Coffee - Flavor Profile and Characteristics

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Yesterday, a fellow coffee professional visited us. He had just returned from Colombia and opened his laptop to show us many photos of last year's popular Pink Bourbon. Looking at the photos, they actually resemble winter dates that gradually ripen over several days, not the Hello Kitty pink we might imagine.

Looking at the slender Pink Bourbon green beans, I casually mentioned that in my impression, Pink Bourbon is supposed to be plump and round, but this Pink Bourbon is quite slender... He laughed and said, "Ha, did you know? Pink Bourbon isn't actually a Bourbon coffee variety!"

What? Then why is it called Pink Bourbon?

At a certain Colombian estate (I'm not intentionally withholding information; I really didn't catch this phrase in Japanese-accented English), they had been growing Caturra on their land for many years. After a leaf rust outbreak, almost all the trees in their fields were wiped out, leaving only a sparse number of surviving trees. These trees all shared a common characteristic: the coffee cherries had an orangeish color.

(Leaf rust, which can devastate coffee trees, is simply a nightmare for coffee farmers worldwide. This is also why many coffee-producing countries promote leaf rust-resistant varieties.)

Natural leaf rust resistance genes! This third-generation estate owner bred from these surviving coffee cherries. Three years later (about four or five years ago), wow! The cupping results amazed everyone! Citrus acidity, apricot and peach flavors, with sugarcane and honey sweetness...

"Hey! My neighbor, what variety is this coffee bean? Sell me some to plant back home!"

Well... this third-generation owner had just heard that there was a very sweet coffee called Pink Bourbon in El Salvador, and the color was quite similar to their own coffee cherries. So he said, "My friend, this is PINK! BOURBON!!"

"—Wow, this bean is so sweet, so citrusy, it really does resemble Bourbon!"

And so, farmers around Huila gradually began growing Pink Bourbon coffee! Several batches of Pink Bourbon that have arrived domestically are also from the Huila region in southern Colombia. (El Salvador's Pink Bourbon is genuinely a Bourbon coffee variety, and its coffee cherries have a peachy pink color.)

Two or three years ago, these Colombian Pink Bourbons were sent to laboratories for genetic analysis. The research institutions wanted to study the connection between wonderful flavors and leaf rust resistance. Currently, the leaf rust-resistant coffee varieties we're familiar with don't perform well in terms of flavor profile.

(In recent years, we've seen many beautiful-tasting leaf rust-resistant varieties emerge. In the winning lists of Cup of Excellence competitions from Nicaragua, Mexico, El Salvador, and other Central American countries, these varieties appear more and more frequently.)

The identification results shocked everyone...

This is a hybrid of Colombia and Caturra varieties! However, everyone still prefers to call it Pink Bourbon coffee—it sounds more premium and seems to sell better...

Of course, the yield of Colombian Pink Bourbon is still lower than that of Colombia variety. From the first cherry ripening to the end of harvesting, the ripening period is much longer, so the cost of harvesting ripe cherries is also higher.

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We all know that Colombia and Castillo varieties are both high-yield, leaf rust-resistant varieties developed by Colombia and promoted for large-scale cultivation nationwide. The Colombia variety contains Catimor genes, and although it has undergone more than five generations of breeding, it still contains Robusta genes.

For Colombia and Caturra, which contain Robusta genes, to evolve into such exceptional coffee—what underdog success story can't we believe?!

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