Pink Bourbon

Pink Bourbon — Bourbon Rosado in Colombia — is an Arabica variety grown mainly in southern Huila, Colombia, named for cherries that ripen a salmon-pink rather than the usual red. It became one of the most sought-after names in specialty coffee over the 2010s and 2020s, and then two rounds of DNA testing established that the name is wrong: Pink Bourbon has nothing to do with Bourbon. It is an Ethiopian landrace — a wild-descended Ethiopian plant — that somehow ended up on Colombian farms.¹²

That gap between the label and the plant is the whole reason this variety is interesting. Everyone kept the name anyway, because by the time the tests came back the coffee was already famous under it.

The name is wrong

The original story, told by the producers who first noticed the trees, was straightforward: pink is roughly halfway between red and yellow, so a tree bearing pink cherries among red Bourbon trees must be a spontaneous cross of Red and Yellow Bourbon.²³ Plausible, and completely unsupported once anyone looked at the DNA.

The green-coffee importer Cafe Imports paid for the testing, commissioned by its director of sensory analysis, Ian Fretheim, in two rounds:¹

	Round	Year	Lab	What was tested	Result
1	First	2017	DNA Analytica	Leaf tissue from two visibly different Pink Bourbon plants — one tall, one short	Both “proved to be similar to wild plants coming from Ethiopia,” but only in the low 80% range of similarity — suggestive, not conclusive1
2	Second	2023	RD2 Vision	Five bean samples — four Pink Bourbon and one Orange Bourbon, from different Colombian and Costa Rican producers	”All five are containing Pink Bourbon, which has nothing to do with Bourbon, as it is an Ethiopian landrace” — RD2 Vision’s Christophe Montagnon1

The 2023 round also found that Pink Bourbon can be told apart from other Ethiopian-descended varieties — including Geisha — with high confidence, so it is not simply mislabelled Geisha.¹

The second finding from that round is arguably more useful to a buyer than the first. Of the five samples, only one was pure Pink Bourbon. Two were mixed with true Bourbon, and two were mixed with Catimor.¹ A bag labelled Pink Bourbon is, more often than not, a mixed planting — which is what happens when a variety spreads farm to farm as seed rather than through a nursery programme.

The narrower claim about which Ethiopian population it descends from is softer. One roaster-journal account puts it as “the lion’s share of its DNA matching coffees you’d find in Sidamo and other parts of southern Ethiopia.”³ Treat southern Ethiopia as the direction of travel, not a pinned location.

To verify

None of this genetic work is peer-reviewed. Both rounds were industry-funded, commissioned by an importer with a commercial interest in the coffee, and published as a company blog post rather than in a journal.¹ Cafe Imports and RD2 Vision are strong primary sources by trade standards and the finding is now the industry consensus — but it rests on unpublished testing that no independent party has reproduced. Perfect Daily Grind’s coverage, written the same month, still hedged it as “likely to have come from an Ethiopian landrace variety” and “not scientifically verified.”⁴ Nothing explains how an Ethiopian plant reached Huila.

To verify

There is no catalogue entry. The World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue, the industry’s nearest thing to an official register, returns HTTP 404 for Pink Bourbon.⁵ This wiki’s Bourbon note already records the same absence for Yellow Bourbon. As with Sidra, every agronomic figure quoted for Pink Bourbon therefore comes from producer testimony or seller copy, not from a catalogue entry — there is no authoritative sheet giving its yield, stature or disease ratings.

Where it came from

Two accounts of the Colombian half of the story exist, and they are about different moments rather than in conflict.

The plant was on farms long before anyone marketed it. Producer Rodrigo Sánchez Valencia, of the Aromas del Sur cooperative in Huila, says Pink Bourbon appeared in San Adolfo, in the municipality of Acevedo, southern Huila, during the 1980s — and that growers adopted it without knowing what it was, because it appeared to shrug off Coffee leaf rust, adapted well and yielded more than what they were growing.⁴ Rust arriving in Colombia in that decade is what made an unidentified survivor tree worth keeping. Sánchez’s own summary: “We believe it’s native to southern Huila in Colombia.”⁴

Specialty found it much later. Sánchez says Aromas del Sur “found Pink Bourbon in 2013,” working with importers and exporters, and he is credited as one of the first producers to grow it as a commercial crop.⁴ On the buying side, Cafe Imports senior green buyer Luis “Lucho” Arocha — cast in the company’s own retelling as a coffee “cryptozoologist” — spotted a pink-fruited tree in November 2014 and traced it back to a farm growing ordinary Bourbon alongside a stand of tall, scraggly trees nobody could identify. The producer’s name for them, Pink Bourbon, is the one that stuck industry-wide.¹²

Then it spread by neighbours, not by nursery. Gabriel Castaño, a farmer in San Agustín, Huila, is widely credited with sharing seed with the farms around him — and because a coffee plant takes about five years to reach full production, the wave of Pink Bourbon lots reaching the market arrived roughly six years behind that sharing.³ That seed-sharing route explains both the variety’s sudden ubiquity and the mixed-genetics problem above.

To verify

No registry backs any of the dates or the farm of origin. The 1980s emergence, the 2013 identification, the November 2014 sighting and Castaño’s seed sharing all rest on producer testimony and importer interviews.¹⁴³ Sprudge notes the original farm was never publicly named.² One roaster summary instead compresses the whole thing to “discovered in southern Huila between 2010 and 2014” and places the identification at Finca Monteblanco, one of Sánchez’s farms — a specific claim this wiki could not confirm at any primary source.⁶

The plant

What can be said with confidence is short:

• Cherries ripen pink to salmon-orange, clearly distinct from red Bourbon — the trait the whole name rests on.¹²⁷
• Trees are described by Cafe Imports, from the Colombian plants it examined, as “tall, scraggly” and Bourbon-like in habit.¹ Note that the 2017 testing sampled both a tall and a short plant under the same name.¹
• Rust: growers in 1980s Huila kept it because it appeared to resist Coffee leaf rust while yielding well.⁴

To verify

The agronomy is contested and untested. Sánchez’s rust-resistance account⁴ is directly contradicted by an educational video that calls Pink Bourbon “very prone to disease” and “fickle,”⁸ and by a roaster page marketing it as a sturdier Bourbon.⁹ No agronomic trial, yield curve or rust-resistance score from any research institute or national variety catalogue was found — and given that samples sold as Pink Bourbon are frequently mixed with Bourbon or Catimor,¹ resistance figures attributed to “Pink Bourbon” may not describe one plant population at all. Two farms could honestly report opposite results.

To verify

The 1,700 m rule. Specialty sellers and educators commonly say Pink Bourbon must be grown above 1,700 m.⁶⁸ That is a quality recommendation repeated as if it were a biological limit; no trial data supports it, and no per-farm altitude range for the variety could be sourced. Huila farms broadly sit at 1,200–1,800 m, so treat any single altitude figure as lot-specific.

What it tastes like

Descriptors cluster tightly across sources, which is the main reason the variety commands its price:

• Floral — jasmine, rose, hibiscus, green tea.⁴⁶
• Bright citrus and stone fruit — grapefruit, peach, papaya, melon.⁴⁸
• Red fruit and high sweetness, with what Sánchez calls a “very balanced coffee in terms of body and acidity.”⁴

Processing swings it hard, as with most varieties in this tier. Washed lots are the floral-and-citrus expression; naturals, honey lots and extended and anaerobic fermentations push it toward jammy red fruit.⁴⁶

No published cupping panel or SCA score sheet for Pink Bourbon as a variety was found. The numbers that circulate come from importer and roaster tasting notes, which are sales copy first.

The claims this wiki will not repeat

To verify

“Pink Bourbon won the 2023 World Coffee Championships.” A widely shared educational video states the 2023 world championships were won on Pink Bourbon, and that the top two finalists both used it.⁸ This wiki’s own competition records do not support it as stated: the World Barista Championship 2023 title went to Boram Um of Brazil, competing on his family’s Brazilian coffee, and the World Brewers Cup 2023 title to Carlos Medina of Chile. No official World Coffee Events score sheet or competitor routine document naming Pink Bourbon was consulted here. Do not repeat the claim in any form until an official results document is checked.

To verify

The first 98-point Pink Bourbon. A Reddit thread reports that producer Wilton Benítez made the first Pink Bourbon lot to score above 98 points, in 2023.¹⁰ The thread links no CQI, ACE or competition score sheet, and no primary scoring document was found. A forum post is the weakest possible source for a record score. Unverified.

To verify

Prices and auction results. Pink Bourbon is routinely described as among the most expensive modern Arabica varieties, near Geisha in market standing.⁴⁶ This wiki carries no verified auction lot, price per pound, buyer or lot number for it. No Cup of Excellence, Best of Panama or ACE record naming Pink Bourbon was located — unsurprising for a mainly Colombian variety, which would surface in Cup of Excellence Colombia or private auctions rather than Panama. Check allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org before quoting a figure. See Premiumisation for why a variety with no paperwork can still clear high prices.

To verify

Ownership and registration. Nothing found suggests Pink Bourbon is patented, trademarked or proprietary to any company; the trade handles it as an open variety anyone may plant.¹⁴ But no Colombian national variety catalogue, UPOV or WIPO database was searched here, so “unregistered and unowned” is provisional rather than established. Perfect Daily Grind describes the variety’s origins as more folklore than hard science, which is a fair summary of the paperwork situation generally.⁴

Where it shows up on this wiki

Pink Bourbon appears at the edges of several notes here, which is a good picture of how far it has travelled:

• Café Granja La Esperanza lists a Pink Bourbon in development alongside its Geisha and Bourbon plantings.
• Nestor Lasso’s farm in Huila has Pink Bourbon among its roaster-listed varieties.
• Big Sur Coffee offers a Colombian Huila Pink Bourbon.
• Helen Russell’s Equator Coffees won a 2026 Good Food Award for a Colombia Las Flores thermal shock Pink Bourbon — the one competition result on this wiki actually attached to the variety.

Related

• Bourbon — the variety it is named after and genetically has nothing to do with; its note carries the same missing-catalogue-entry problem
• Sidra — the closest parallel on this wiki: a famous variety with no registry entry and a contested pedigree
• Chiroso — the Antioquian version of the same story: named after Caturra, genetics pointing at Ethiopia, no catalogue entry
• Geisha — the other Ethiopian-descended variety it is constantly compared to, and which testing can distinguish it from
• Catimor — one of the varieties found mixed into samples sold as Pink Bourbon
• Huila · Colombia — where it emerged and where it is grown
• Ethiopia · Sidama — where its DNA points
• Cafe Imports — the importer that paid for both rounds of testing
• World Coffee Research — keeper of the catalogue that has no entry for it
• Coffee leaf rust — the disease that got it planted in the first place
• Washed process · Natural process · Anaerobic fermentation · Thermal shock processing — the processing choices that shape its cup
• Coffee scoring · Cupping — how lots like these get judged
• Premiumisation — why an undocumented variety can sell at a premium

Official links

• Official site — World Coffee Research Arabica variety catalogue — the authoritative variety register; note it carries no Pink Bourbon entry
• Official post — Cafe Imports, the genetic testing behind Pink Bourbon — the company that commissioned the DNA work, publishing its own results

Footnotes

1. Cafe Imports — Pink…Bourbon?: Cryptozoology and Genetics in Specialty Coffee — confirmed via WebFetch; the primary account, source of Ian Fretheim commissioning the testing, the 2017 DNA Analytica and 2023 RD2 Vision rounds, the Montagnon quotation, the pure/Bourbon/Catimor sample split, the Geisha distinction, the “tall, scraggly” description and the November 2014 sighting ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

2. Sprudge — One Lie And A Truth: Pink Bourbon’s True Origin — confirmed via WebFetch; independent trade-press coverage of the same testing, source of Luis “Lucho” Arocha’s role as senior green buyer, the red × yellow Bourbon hybrid belief and the note that the original farm was never named ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Luna Coffee Journal — Seed Sharing and the Enigmatic History of Pink Bourbon — confirmed via WebFetch; source of Gabriel Castaño in San Agustín, the seed-sharing spread, the five-year time-to-production point and the Sidamo DNA-match wording ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Perfect Daily Grind — Pink Bourbon: a new darling of specialty coffee? — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the San Adolfo / Acevedo emergence in the 1980s, the rust and yield account, the 2013 Aromas del Sur identification, Rodrigo Sánchez Valencia’s quotations and flavour descriptors, and the hedged “not scientifically verified” framing ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴

5. World Coffee Research — Arabica variety catalogue — the variety register; the Pink Bourbon URL returned HTTP 404 when checked here, confirming there is no catalogue entry ↩

6. Colipse Coffee — Pink Bourbon coffee: origin, taste and brewing guide — roaster blog; source of the “discovered between 2010 and 2014” framing, the Finca Monteblanco attribution, the altitude claim and processing/flavour descriptions ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

7. Steampunk Coffee — What’s so special about Pink Bourbon? — roaster blog; source of the cherry colour description and the original hybrid narrative ↩

8. What is Pink Bourbon Coffee (YouTube) — educational video; sole source of the unverified 2023 world championship claim, the above-1,700 m assertion and the “prone to disease” description ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Sagebrush Coffee — Pink Bourbon: a sturdier Bourbon with amazing potential — roaster blog; the “sturdier” framing flagged above as unsupported ↩

10. Reddit r/pourover — Pink bourbon — forum thread; sole source of the unverified Wilton Benítez 98-point claim ↩