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One more quick point (hah!) on Bourbon Pointu. It would appear that this coffee’s pointu (or, pointed) appellation is well earned. I’ve roasted any number of long-bean coffees, but this is something else, again. (Click the image¹ to get a zoomified look.)

Given that any long-bean coffee takes a certain amount of care in roasting to avoid tipping — scorching the exposed ends of the bean — I have to think that roasting Bourbon Pointu would be something of a nightmare.

Still, I’d love to give it a try. ;)

Notes and Links

1. Image source, Ueshima Coffee Co., Japan. ↩

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The tiny island of Réunion¹ is little more than a dot in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and southwest of Mauritius. For nearly 200 years that dot was the foundation of a singular exclamation point in coffee history. A peculiar varietal was cultivated at Réunion — a low-growing, long-bean mutation of Red Bourbon that came to be known as Bourbon Pointu, or simply, Leroy — and was said to be favored in turn by France’s King Louis XV, and satirist Honoré de Balzac.

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 ↩

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This year, St. Helena, a tiny little island in the South Atlantic, produced only 4,500 pounds of coffee. Two bags of the ‘01 crop–maybe 270 pounds–made it to the U.S. One pound of this elusive bean found its way to my house.

It’s a pretty bean: small, almost round and dense. It’s beautifully prepared: like a pearl, it nearly glows. While that’s all well and good, the question is, how does it cup? With no small amount of trepidation, I decided to find out. How does one go about roasting a rare bean? Just like any other coffee… you take notes. In this case, lots o’ notes. The only tragedy worse than messing up a batch of rare coffee like this is to not note how and why, and risk doing it twice. (more…)

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It’s a pretty rare thing today when a coffee consumer has the opportunity to communicate with, much less buy from, the coffee farmer. Hawaiian coffees provide a delightful exception, and few, perhaps, are more delightful [coffees and farmers, alike] than Bob and Cea Smith of Smithfarms on the Kona coast of Hawaii.
Smithfarms is a five acre family-owned and operated farm, some 1,800 feet up the slope of Mauna Loa [itself 13,300 feet]. Bob and Cea are clearly passionate about their arabica typica coffee trees [and macadamia nut trees, and their honeybees]. While not certified organic, they use no insecticides, their coffee is naturally shade grown, hand-picked and sun dried, and they practice sustainable farming, aided in no small part by Bob’s degree in tropical agriculture.

Smithfarms offers two green coffees - “Estate Grade Run” flat berry coffee [a mix of unscreened number 1, fancy and extra fancy grades] and Kona Peaberry. This profile is of the Kona peaberry, as I favor peaberry coffees. There’s little reason to believe that the Estate Grade Run coffee would differ substantially, if at all, from the peaberry’s profile.

For a peaberry, these are big beans, and very uniform. I’m finding very few defects, even for a premium coffee like this–about seven or so per pound. [I *have* found a couple very small lava-rock type pebbles. No problem in the air-roaster, but mind your grinders.]

Smithfarms has produced what I view as the archetypical Kona coffee–a very clean, light, well-balanced cup. It is intensely fragrant dry, and nearly so brewed in the cup. This is a very bright coffee. It’s acidity would likely carry well into a Full City roast, though, frankly, I don’t go there. It is a fairly light coffee, though I find more body in this cup than I often do in a Kona… I suspect that if the peaberry has any impact at all it contributes to its slightly richer mouth-feel. It’s flavor is nutty, sweet and refreshing, and it fairly begs to be drunk with chocolate. There isn’t the slightest hint of wildness, or earthiness… it is a distinctly clean cup. It’s more delicate flavor, alas, leaves it wanting only for a stronger, or longer, finish.

It would be a shame to roast this coffee too long, and chance losing its distinctly Kona characteristics. As for me, I roast to a Light City [the lightest I roast any coffee.] This is a good coffee to roast by nose. Pay close attention to the roast as first crack comes to a close… the moment that you no longer smell any hint of grassiness be ready… and at the very first hint of pungency, hit the cooling switch or dump the beans to your cooling tray.

Kona has finally rounded the corner to once again deserve its reputation as a premium island coffee. And Bob and Cea at Smithfarms should be proud of their contribution to the cause.

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