What Are the Types of Arabica Coffee - The Turbulent Journey of Bourbon Coffee Origin from Yemen

FrontStreet Coffee — The Bourbon Variety

Coffee beans are broadly divided into categories such as Arabica and Robusta.

Today the focus is Arabica. Its flavor is far more refined than that of other coffee types, and the world's specialty coffee today is overwhelmingly Arabica.

Among all the coffee grown worldwide, Arabica accounts for about 70% of total production and carries significant commercial value.

Arabica spread from the Arabian Peninsula to every corner of the world. Depending on the route it travelled, sub-varieties such as Typica and Bourbon emerged, and mutation and crossbreeding later produced many branched varieties.

Bourbon is a variety of coffee tree belonging to the Arabica family. It is named for the color of the ripe fruit — red, yellow, orange and pink Bourbon all exist. Orange Bourbon yields comparatively little, and pink Bourbon is extremely rare.

The name Bourbon comes from Réunion Island. The French made three attempts, in 1708, 1715 and 1718, to introduce coffee from Yemen to Bourbon Island (now Réunion); the coffee that survived and propagated came from the second and third transplantings.

In 1841 a French missionary established a church in the French territory of Réunion. After leaving the island he went on to Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, St. Augustine, Bula and several other African countries to found new churches, planting coffee from Réunion at each one. From then on, Bourbon coffee existed on the African continent as well.

After 1900, French missionaries introduced Bourbon from Bourbon Island to Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and elsewhere. Today Bourbon is a major force in high-quality coffee worldwide.

Slightly different from red-tipped Typica, Bourbon has green tips, wide leaves with wavy edges and a yield 30% higher than Typica. The beans are rounder and shorter, with rich berry acidity, prominent creaminess and aroma, a strong acidic fragrance and noticeable fruity acidity. It shares the same weakness, however: poor disease resistance.

Knowledge point: Most coffee grows in the equatorial belt between 25° north and south, within the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The growing belt and the country of origin have a huge influence on flavor.

FrontStreet Coffee's Mission

FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center happy to share knowledge about coffee with everyone. It shares without reservation for one reason: to help more people fall in love with coffee. Every month there are three low-discount coffee activities, because FrontStreet Coffee wants more drinkers to taste the best coffee at the lowest price. This has been its mission for the past 6 years.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Since Bourbon sits at the root of so many Arabica varieties, FrontStreet Coffee's range is a good way to taste what those branches became.

FrontStreet Hua Kui — the variety is Ethiopia's most common landrace, a mix of several undifferentiated coffee trees, so the beans vary in size. It carries a delicate floral lift with especially prominent fruit aromas. Processed naturally, it shows cream strawberry, mango, jackfruit, citrus and blueberry, with the ripe tropical fruit character unique to FrontStreet's Sidama natural lots. This was the coffee that won first place in that year's TOH green bean competition, and it balances great flavor with a fair price.

FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Gedingding Cooperative — if Hua Kui is the natural Arabica standard-bearer from Ethiopia, Gedingding is the washed one. Yirgacheffe's clean, translucent lemon and citrus profile makes it a cornerstone of specialty Arabica, and the town is made up of many small villages that build their own processing stations, or cooperatives. The station in Gedingding village is the Gedingding Cooperative. FrontStreet's beans are Ethiopia's top G1 grade, classically washed, showing elegant white floral, citrus, orange and green tea flavors.

FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Estate — Bourbon is as old a variety as Typica and also belongs to Arabica; it takes its name from Bourbon Island (le Bourbon), where it was first planted. Bourbon trees have broader leaves and denser growth, and yield about 30% more than Typica, with round, short beans that make them easy to identify. Ripe fruit is normally red, but as cultivation spread, mutations appeared — including fruit that ripens orange-yellow, known as yellow Bourbon. FrontStreet's Queen's Estate was among the earliest yellow Bourbon discoveries, with cream, peanut, toasted bread and sugarcane aromas, a rich and gently sweet cup, and it works for pour-over, moka pot and espresso machine alike.

FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No.1 — a representative Typica and one of the earliest varieties transplanted from Yemen to India, Indonesia and the Americas. Typica is beautifully balanced, gentle and smooth, with acidity that never cuts sharply and an aroma that is full and pure; its weaknesses are poor disease resistance and low yield. Blue Mountain Typica reached Jamaica from Martinique in the 1720s, and over more than 200 years it evolved better resistance, particularly to rot, though it cannot reproduce its sweet, subtle fragrance outside Jamaica.

FrontStreet Panama Red Label Geisha — Geisha took the world by storm with its lush, elegant florals, citrus, peach and complex fruit acidity, cream-like texture and a lingering oolong-tea sweetness in the finish — a coffee that feels less like coffee than a fragrant fruit tea. Compared with other Arabica varieties, Geisha yields little, the plant is fragile and it is demanding about its environment. FrontStreet's Red Label Geisha comes from Panama's most famous farm, Hacienda La Esmeralda in Boquete, Chiriquí province, where fertile volcanic soil, old forest, year-round mist and abundant rain create ideal growing conditions.

FrontStreet Colombia Sidra — Sidra originated in Pichincha province, Ecuador, where locals called it Sydra. Genetic comparison found that Sidra shares genes with Ethiopian landraces, leading researchers to suggest it arose from a cross between an experimental variety exported from Ethiopia and local Ecuadorian Bourbon. At the 2022 World Barista Championship, champion Anthony Douglas used a Sidra from Finca El Diviso, and the variety has drawn attention ever since. FrontStreet's Sidra is roasted light-medium and shows florals, tropical fruit, grape, candied fruit and passion fruit with a juice-like body.