Honduras Lalita Orange Bourbon Natural

Coffee Profile

Continent: Asia

Country: Vietnam

Farm: Vuong Farm

Process: Anaerobic Honey

Region: Lam Dong

Roast Scale

Light Medium Dark

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Tasting Notes

Lemon, caramel, Jackfruit. A citric acidity livens the cup. The cup fades to caramel and milk chocolate in the finish.

About Orange Bourbon

 The Bourbon variety is one of the two major cultivated varieties from which most coffee growing around the world today descends (The other being Typica) 

In 1718 seeds from Yemen were brought to the French colony on Reunion Island near Madagascar, The called Bourbon Island after the French House of Bourbon which ruled France at the time. Around 1860 plants from Reunion were brought to mainland Africa and to Brazil. The coffee depended from these plants came to be known as the Bourbon variety after the name of the island at that time.

Bourbon can still be found fairly commonly in Africa, Brazil, and some countries in Central America such as Guatemala and El Salvador.

The bourbon variety usually produces red fruit, but mutations have ocurred where the fruit color is yellow. There is a cultivated variety called Yellow Bourbon which is rarer but still not too uncommon which resulted from a natural cross of Red Bourbon and a Yellow fruited Typica plant called Yellow de Botucatu in Brazil in 1930 and was released commercially to growers in the early 1950's. 

And then there is Orange Bourbon, the origins of which are more murky. Any time there are red and yellow fruited trees in the same field it is possible to get some plants of an intermediary orange color or pink color.

As a cultivated variety Orange bourbon is exceedingly rare. Occasionally grown still on a handful of farms in El Salvador it is from there that the Mierisch family acquired seeds of the variety to plant on their farms in Nicaragua and Honduras. 

Orange bourbon has a cup profile in between red and yellow bourbon. It has the well balanced sweet cup of red bourbon, but a more delicate flavor profile of caramel and citrus that is more like yellow bourbon. 

About Orange Bourbon

 The Bourbon variety is one of the two major cultivated varieties from which most coffee growing around the world today descends (The other being Typica) 

In 1718 seeds from Yemen were brought to the French colony on Reunion Island near Madagascar, The called Bourbon Island after the French House of Bourbon which ruled France at the time. Around 1860 plants from Reunion were brought to mainland Africa and to Brazil. The coffee depended from these plants came to be known as the Bourbon variety after the name of the island at that time.

Bourbon can still be found fairly commonly in Africa, Brazil, and some countries in Central America such as Guatemala and El Salvador.

The bourbon variety usually produces red fruit, but mutations have ocurred where the fruit color is yellow. There is a cultivated variety called Yellow Bourbon which is rarer but still not too uncommon which resulted from a natural cross of Red Bourbon and a Yellow fruited Typica plant called Yellow de Botucatu in Brazil in 1930 and was released commercially to growers in the early 1950's. 

And then there is Orange Bourbon, the origins of which are more murky. Any time there are red and yellow fruited trees in the same field it is possible to get some plants of an intermediary orange color or pink color.

As a cultivated variety Orange bourbon is exceedingly rare. Occasionally grown still on a handful of farms in El Salvador it is from there that the Mierisch family acquired seeds of the variety to plant on their farms in Nicaragua and Honduras. 

As far as to how orange bourbon came to Vietnam, we aren't sure. Vietnam being a former French colony used to have lots of Bourbon variety coffee growing there in colonial times. Yellow bourbon exists there so it isn't surprising there is also orange bourbon. Whether Yellow bourbon came there from the Brazilian material or it was a local mutation producing yellow fruit on bourbon plants there (which would make it more of a true yellow bourbon than the Brazilian variety bearing that name which is a hybrid with typica) we don't know yet. But we are sending samples of both to RD2 in France for Genetic comparison to see if that question may be answered.

Orange bourbon has a cup profile in between red and yellow bourbon. It has the well balanced sweet cup of red bourbon, but a more delicate flavor profile of caramel and citrus that is more like yellow bourbon. 

We hope you enjoy comparing the similarities and differences in these two washed examples grown on opposite parts of the earth.

 Finca Lalita

Information from farm owner Erwin Mierisch

"Our Orange Bourbon seed stock comes from Nicaragua, more specifically from my
uncle’s farm, El Suspiro. My uncle, Alejandro Saldaña, who is originally from El
Salvador obtained his seeds from his home country, from the renowned Malacara
producers. 

My father, Erwin J. Mierisch, was head judge for COE in Honduras in 2011 and he
saw great potential in Honduran coffee. At the time Honduran coffee wasn’t
perceived or noticed for high-quality. The story on how we learned about Cerro
Azul is the following: After the Honduran COE my dad attended SCAE in 2011.
There he and Stephen Leighton of Has Bean UK were talking about the great
potential of Honduran coffee. Stephen jokingly said, “why do you just buy a coffee
farm in Honduras?” As luck would have it, later that night, an UTZ inspector came
up to them and mentioned he had accidentally overheard their conversation and
said he knew a producer in Honduras that was selling his farm. That farm was
Cerro Azul. The rest is history."

The Mierisch family acquired other properties near near Cerro Azul including Lalita at 1450-1550m where this Orange Bourbon Lot comes from.