How Many Common Color Varieties of Bourbon Coffee Exist?

The legacy of Bourbon coffee varieties

Within the Arabica species, Typica and Bourbon are the genetically most important coffee varieties in the world and the oldest existing cultivars. People tend to value Bourbon more, however, because it currently has numerous color variants.

The origins and history of Bourbon

According to some records, the Bourbon variety originated in Yemen and is a natural mutation of Typica. In the early 17th century, French missionaries introduced it from Yemen to the Mascarene Islands, located 680 kilometers east of Madagascar. After the French occupied the island, they named it Ile Bourbon (Bourbon Island, now Reunion Island) and simultaneously named this batch of Yemeni coffee Bourbon coffee.

In the 18th century, Reunion Island became a nursery where the French cultivated Yemeni Bourbon coffee. Until the mid-19th century, with the missionary journeys of the French Holy Spirit Church, Bourbon coffee began to be brought to Africa and South America for cultivation.

Spread and evolution in the Americas

When introduced to South America, its first destination was Campinas in southern Brazil. At the time, Brazil mainly cultivated the Typica variety. Compared with Typica, though, Bourbon was equally susceptible to disease and pests but had higher yields, so it rapidly expanded to other regions of Brazil and gradually spread to other countries in South and Central America.

Later, with the development of the coffee industry, continuous transplantation, mutations, and hybridization gave birth to many varieties. Today in Latin America, Bourbon has mostly been replaced by its variants (such as Caturra, Catuai, and Mundo Novo), with only Brazil, El Salvador, Peru, and other countries still cultivating Bourbon.

Color variations of Bourbon

Generally, after coffee trees flower and bear fruit, the fruit color changes from green to light yellow, gradually turns orange, and finally becomes red or dark red when ripe. The Bourbon variety is quite special, though. After nearly a century of cultivation, it began to develop mutant varieties, including color mutations such as Yellow Bourbon, Orange Bourbon, and Pink Bourbon. The common Bourbon variety, to distinguish it, is also called Red Bourbon.

Yellow Bourbon

According to some records, Yellow Bourbon was first discovered in the 1930s at a Bourbon-cultivating farm in Pederneiras, Sao Paulo state, Brazil. Some believe it is a natural mutation of Red Bourbon, while others suggest it is a natural propagation between Red Bourbon and "Amerelo de Botocatu" (a Typica variant with yellow fruit discovered in Sao Paulo state in 1871).

Later, the Campinas Agricultural Research Institute (IAC) in Brazil began researching this coffee and released several commercial varieties of Yellow Bourbon in the 1950s. Although Yellow Bourbon matures faster and has more pronounced sweetness and aroma than Red Bourbon, along with distinct citrus acidity, its yield is lower and its resistance to coffee diseases poorer. It is therefore cultivated only in some areas of Sao Paulo state. At FrontStreet Coffee, there is a Yellow Bourbon from Fazenda Rainha in the Mogiana region of Sao Paulo state, Brazil. After brewing, it presents fruity sweetness with nutty flavors of sugarcane, chocolate, and peanut, along with a slight, clean bitterness and a smooth, delicate mouthfeel.

Orange Bourbon

Orange Bourbon was first discovered in El Salvador and is a natural mutation of the coffee fruit color gene. It is sometimes easily confused with Colombia's "Pink Bourbon."

Pink Bourbon

In recent years, a relatively new variety has frequently appeared in Colombian competitions: Pink Bourbon, named for the elegant, soft pink color of its coffee fruit. Initially, Pink Bourbon was a hybrid result of crossing Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon. Its pink appearance belongs to a recessive gene; once it meets dominant genes like red or yellow, it is masked and does not show. So although this variety has strong disease resistance, it is very difficult to maintain stable output, with extremely low yields. It must be cultivated separately from other varieties to reduce the risk of being covered by other colors.

Although everyone considers Pink Bourbon a Bourbon variety, later genetic testing revealed that it is not purely of Bourbon genes. Most of its genes are similar to Ethiopian native varieties, so the exact origin and true identity of this variety cannot yet be determined.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Among the Bourbon color variants, Red Bourbon remains one of the easiest to enjoy, and FrontStreet's Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon is a classic single origin from the well-known Cerrado region. Medium-roasted, it shows rich creamy peanut, toast, caramel, and hazelnut aromas with a round body, no sourness, and a light bitter note, and it brews well as pour-over, in a Moka pot, as espresso SOE, in a siphon, or in a French press.

To taste a color mutation directly, the FrontStreet Brazil Queen Estate is grown in Mogiana, near South Minas, on fertile red volcanic soil and is the rare yellow Bourbon, a natural mutation of Red Bourbon with cleaner fruit. It offers a sugarcane sweetness found in no other region along with fruit and chocolate notes. Brazil also underlies most espresso blends: low acidity, a balanced body, and an approachable price make Brazilian beans a first choice in many specialty recipes, adding chocolate and cream aromas with a soft, balanced sweet-sour-bitter profile that helps keep extraction stable.