Bourbon Pointu thrived on Réunion until the 1950s, when twin calamities of coffee rust (a disease of the coffee plant) and fire ants invaded the island’s plantations.² The plantations were abandoned… and the island’s unique varietal was thought to be lost forever.

Perhaps it would be, if not for the efforts of Yoshiaki Kawashima. A life-long coffee man and the son of a coffee roaster, for 30 years Kawashima worked to develop coffee plantations in Jamaica, Sumatra, and on Hawaii’s Kona coast. Kawashima first heard of Réunion’s coffee varietal while researching coffee in El Salvador, though at the time the coffee experts he worked with believed the varietal had died out long before…

” In 1999, he went to East Africa on business and got a chance to visit Reunion. He set foot on the island hoping to find one of the legendary coffee plants. He left the island disappointed. “Nobody knew anything about Bourbon Pointu. The islanders didn’t even know that Reunion was once a coffee producer. A local took me to a supermarket and said, ‘Here, you have coffee.’ ”

“Undaunted, Kawashima continued the quest. He interviewed local farmers and town officials. Two years later, he got his big break–a local veterinarian had found 30 coffee plants growing in the wild.”

“The discovery kicked off an ambitious five-year project that would culminate in the revival of a coffee industry thought long lost on Reunion.”
— Asahi.com

This year marked the first commercial harvest of Réunion’s Bourbon Pointu in 50 years. It sold out “almost immediately” upon arrival in Japan despite it’s high-flying price — nearly US $70 for a quarter pound.

No doubt King Louis would be proud.

Notes and Links

1. In French: Isle de la Réunion or La Réunion, formerly Isle Bourbon
2. Genevieve Felix, SCAA’s Cafénatic, Summer ’04

Once upon a time, in a faraway land called Ethiopia � or maybe Abyssinia, it was a very long time ago, after all � there lived a young goatherd named Kaldi. By all accounts [and there are many, as the story has been retold many, many times] Kaldi was a very responsible young man, and not one to do foolish things.

Every day Kaldi would set his goats to grazing in the hills that surrounded his village, and every evening his loyal goats would return home. This, of course, would suggest that the goats were the responsible parties. How foolish is it, after all, to just turn your goats loose into the hills every morning? But, back to our story…

One evening, Kaldi’s goats did not return home. The young man, no doubt feeling a little foolish by now, searched for his herd all through the night, and as morning broke he found them, leaping and dancing with reckless abandon and apparent glee round a stand of shiny, dark-leafed shrubs with bright red berries. Kaldi took in the scene before him, amazed. He soon decided it must be the berries that caused such reckless behavior in his otherwise responsible goats, and � forgetting everything his mother told him about eating strange foods from strange places � Kaldi sampled the berries, himself. In no time, he too was dancing gleefully with his goats around the green-leafed shrubs.

Soon, we are told, a wise and learned man passed by � an imam, or monk � trudging sleepily on his way to prayer. The imam rubbed his eyes and took in the scene before him � Kaldi and his goats � dancing gleefully about a stand of shiny, dark-leafed shrubs with bright red berries.

Being both a curious and learned man, the imam gathered some of these berries, himself, and on returning home he studied them. In his experiments with the bright red berries, he roasted them, boiled them and sampled the resulting beverage. He shared what he found with the rest of his fellow monks, and soon none fell asleep at prayers! And so coffee spread from place to place, creating a more gleeful, and wakeful, world.

So what of Kaldi? Perhaps he and his goats are dancing, still.

It’s December 16th, 1773 on Union Street, in Boston’s north end. Here, in the heart of the city’s financial district, stands an imposing two-story building. Above its door swings a copper dragon, long since turned green in Boston’s salt air. This is the Green Dragon Tavern & Coffee House – meeting hall, gathering place, lodge house – and crucible for the American Revolution.

All evening long patrons have been entering under the sign of the dragon, and “Mohawks� – rebels carrying hatchets and clubs, faces painted with coal dust – have been furtively slipping out the back door into the night, en route to Griffin’s wharf. Tomorrow three shiploads of tea – despised both for its outrageous tax burden, and the monopoly granted the East India Tea Company by the British Parliament – are to be offloaded under the watchful eyes and guns of the British Admiral.

For weeks, patrons of the Green Dragon have been discussing tea, taxes and tyranny over their cups of coffee and rum. With passionate arguments led by Joseph Warren and Paul Revere, noted Sons of Liberty, the conversation becomes earnest… and swings from impassioned debate to a call for action.

Tonight, at Griffin’s wharf, the Mohawks answer that call. Boston Harbor becomes the largest teacup ever known as the entire tea consignment – all 90,000 pounds – is tossed overboard. Two thousand colonists watch as 150 Mohawks – men they know, despite their thin disguises, as pillars of their community – heave scores of smashed tea trunks into the harbor. In the morning, in a spectacular showing of fraternity, not one of the spectators would recall a single face.

It’s a defining event. In the years to follow, drinking tea in the American colonies would mark you as a British loyalist. Coffee – untaxed, and not subject to British monopoly – becomes on this fateful night in December, the drink of patriots.

First offered by apothecaries in Venice and street vendors in Milan, coffee found footing in Vienna by way of a failed Ottoman invasion, and found the fancy of Germany’s upper crust: it inspired Johann Sebastian Bach’s Coffee Cantata, and obsessed Ludvig van Beethoven, who was rumored to grind precisely 60 beans for each aromatic cup. [A recipe that makes a very good cup... even if it's preparation is a wee bit time-intensive.]

It was in London, however, where coffee — and coffee houses — became the rage. The first London coffee house opened at Oxford University in 1650, and by 1700 more than 2000 coffeehouses dotted the London landscape. Early coffeehouses served more than coffee; they also served as hotbeds of conversation, politics and commerce. One coffeehouse might serve as a gathering place for physicians, another for actors, or musicians, or lawyers or clergy. These gathering places became known as Penny Universities… for the price of a cup of coffee, one could sit for hours and participate in the discourse of the day.

Or, one could conduct his business of the day — and a great many did. Mr. Edward Lloyd’s coffee house catered largely to merchants and sailors of the day, as well as the underwriters who met over coffee to offer insurance. In time, Lloyd’s Coffee House became Lloyd’s of London, the storied insurance company. Likewise, other coffeehouses — centers for news, currency and futures markets — became newspapers, banks, and stock exchanges, many of which thrive still today.

Behold, the power of coffee!

While coffee originated in Arabian lands, the legend of its powers of sobriety and mental clarity quickly spread far beyond Arabian borders.

The Christian world grew increasingly alarmed about the legendary qualities of coffee, which was even then being sold by apothecaries –- by prescription only — in Venice. Petitioners brought coffee before Pope Clement VII in order that he might condemn it as the “devil’s brewâ€?. To their surprise, Clement immensely enjoyed the beverage, and baptized it, so that all could enjoy the beverage without guilt… and without a prescription.

Arab traders were keen to ship boiled or parched seeds the entire world over, but were careful to never allow beans or cuttings that could create new coffee plants to leave the Arabian borders. Coffee became so precious to them, that it was made illegal to export fertile beans.

On pilgrimage to Mecca in the middle of the 1600s, Baba Budan, a revered Moslem holy man from India, discovered for himself the wonders of coffee. In his zeal to share what he’d found with his fellows at home, he smuggled seven coffee beans out of Arabia, wrapped around his belly. On his return home, he planted the beans in the hills of Mysore, India, and nurtured the young coffee bushes that resulted. Coffee flourished in the hills of India – hills now named after Baba Budan.

In short order, enterprising Dutch traders bought some of these coffee plants, and shipped them to faraway colonies in Indonesia and Ceylon. The Arabian monopoly of the coffee trade was over, and the Western world was waking up to a new aroma… one that would now play a fateful role in Europe, and beyond.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land called Ethiopia — or maybe Abyssinia, it was a very long time ago, after all — there lived a young goatherd named Kaldi. By all accounts [and there are many, as the story has been retold many, many times] Kaldi was a very responsible young man, and not one to do foolish things.

Every day Kaldi would set his goats to grazing in the hills that surrounded his village, and every evening his loyal goats would return home. This, of course, would suggest that the goats were the responsible parties. How foolish is it, after all, to just turn your goats loose into the hills every morning? But, back to our story…

One evening, Kaldi’s goats did not return home. The young man, no doubt feeling a little foolish by now, searched for his herd all through the night, and as morning broke he found them, leaping and dancing with reckless abandon and apparent glee round a stand of shiny, dark-leafed shrubs with bright red berries. Kaldi took in the scene before him, amazed. He soon decided it must be the berries that caused such reckless behavior in his otherwise responsible goats, and — forgetting everything his mother told him about eating strange foods from strange places — Kaldi sampled the berries, himself. In no time, he too was dancing gleefully with his goats around the green-leafed shrubs.

Soon, we are told, a wise and learned man passed by — an imam, or monk — trudging sleepily on his way to prayer. The imam rubbed his eyes and took in the scene before him — Kaldi and his goats — dancing gleefully about a stand of shiny, dark-leafed shrubs with bright red berries.

Being both a curious and learned man, the imam gathered some of these berries, himself, and on returning home he studied them. In his experiments with the bright red berries, he roasted them, boiled them and sampled the resulting beverage. He shared what he found with the rest of his fellow monks, and soon none fell asleep at prayers! And so coffee spread from place to place, creating a more gleeful, and wakeful, world.

So what of Kaldi? Perhaps he and his goats are dancing, still.