When it comes to Bourbon, according to some records, this variety comes from Yemen and is a natural mutation of Typica. In the early 17th century, French missionaries introduced it from Yemen to the Mascarene Islands, 680 km east of the island of Madagascar. After the French occupied the island, they named it Ile Bourbon (French: ÎleBourbon, also translated as Bourbon Island, now Reunion Island), and also 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, when, along with the missionary journeys of the French Holy Spirit Church, Bourbon coffee began to be taken to Africa and South America for planting.

When it was introduced to South America, the first place it reached was Campinas in southern Brazil. At that time, Brazil mainly grew the Typica variety, but compared with Typica, although Bourbon is similarly susceptible to diseases and insect pests, Bourbon has a higher yield, so it quickly expanded to other regions of Brazil for planting, and gradually spread to other countries in South America and Central America.

But later, with the development of the coffee industry, through continuous transplanting, mutation and hybridization, many coffee varieties were also bred. Therefore, in Latin America today, most Bourbon varieties have been replaced by their mutations (Caturra, Catuai, Mundo Novo, etc.), and only Brazil, El Salvador, Peru and other countries still grow Bourbon.

After an ordinary coffee tree flowers and bears fruit, the color of the fruit changes from green to slightly yellow, gradually to orange, and finally, when ripe, to red or an even riper dark red. But the Bourbon variety is rather special, because after nearly a hundred years of propagation, mutated varieties began to appear, and color mutations also formed, such as Yellow Bourbon, Orange Bourbon and Pink Bourbon, while the common Bourbon, in order to distinguish it, is also called Red Bourbon.

Best Coffee looked through the records and found that the good-looking Yellow Bourbon was first discovered in the 1930s in the city of Pederneiras in Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on a farm growing Bourbon. Some people believe this is a natural mutation of Red Bourbon, but there is also a saying that it is the natural reproduction of Red Bourbon and "Amerelo de Botocatu (a yellow-fruited Typica mutant variety discovered in Sao Paulo state in 1871)."

Later, the Campinas Agronomic Institute (IAC) in Brazil began researching this coffee and in the 1950s released several commercial varieties of Yellow Bourbon. Although Yellow Bourbon coffee ripens faster, has sweeter and more aromatic notes than Red Bourbon, and has obvious citrus acidity, its yield is lower than Red Bourbon, and its resistance to coffee diseases is also worse, so it is only grown in some parts of Sao Paulo state, Brazil.

On Best Coffee's bean list, there is a coffee bean from the Mogiana region of Sao Paulo state, Brazil - Fazenda Rainha, which is precisely the Yellow Bourbon variety. After brewing, it has fruity sweetness, as well as nutty flavors such as sugarcane, chocolate and peanut, a faint clean bitterness, and a smooth, delicate mouthfeel.

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

In Colombian competitions in recent years, a relatively new variety often appears, and that is Pink Bourbon, named for its coffee fruit color, which is a light, soft pink. Originally, Pink Bourbon was a hybrid created by crossing Red Bourbon and Yellow Bourbon, and its pink appearance is a recessive gene; once it meets a dominant gene such as red or yellow, it will be masked and will not show. Therefore, even though this variety has particularly strong disease resistance, it is very difficult to maintain stable output, and its yield is extremely low. It must also be planted separately from other varieties to reduce the risk of being covered by other colors.

Although everyone regards Pink Bourbon as a Bourbon variety, genetic testing later revealed that Pink Bourbon does not solely carry 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.

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