Colombia Huila Pink Bourbon Coffee

Pink Bourbon from Huila is one of specialty coffee's best-known mysteries: genetic tests suggest it is not a Bourbon at all. The cup is rose and passion fruit with panela and cacao.

Origin & Story

Pink Bourbon sounds like a rare variant of Bourbon, a color form with pink cherries. The DNA says otherwise. In 2017 a laboratory tested samples for Cafe Imports, and in 2023 a researcher, Christophe Montagnon, confirmed the result: the coffee was not a Bourbon but an Ethiopian landrace, close to wild plants from Ethiopia.

The producer most closely associated with bringing it to wide attention is Rodrigo Sanchez Valencia of Finca Monteblanco, in Huila, where it was discovered and grown, and the name stuck in the market even after the genetics were known.

Huila is the department that produces more coffee than any other in Colombia. It lies in the southwest Andes, where nitrogen-rich volcanic soil from the nearby Nevado del Huila and altitudes of roughly 1,200 to 2,000 meters give slow-ripening cherries.

Coffee reached Colombia by the late 1700s, and the oldest written record is a 1730 book by the Jesuit priest José Gumilla, describing coffee at a mission near where the Meta River meets the Orinoco. Today the National Federation of Coffee Growers, founded in 1927, represents more than 500,000 producers, most of them on small family farms.

Whatever the genetics, the cup is distinctive: rose and passion fruit on top, panela and cacao underneath, and a silky texture in a filter brew.

Reading the Flavor Profile

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