Three Bourbons....

As tends to happen in the coffee industry, for whatever reason, a Twitter fight erupted several months ago concerning the importance of botanical cultivars versus geographic designations in retail coffee bag labelling (tawdry and banal, I know). The argument is a sensible one, trying to figure two things at once: one, which point of information is both more relateable and useful for consumers for us to transmit, and two, which of the two functions gives us a better idea of the flavor profile of a given coffee? 

My mind on this at the time was a bit of an eye-roll. As I've written previously, the flavor development in coffee comes from a number of factors -- soil, environment, processing, varietal, storage & age of the coffee, and the hows and reasons for roasting, to name just a few variables -- play into what flavors we find in a coffee. Of those, the soil & environment interplay with varietal to produce the general flavor outcomes we find in a given coffee, manipulated by roast and brewing method.  All of these variables -- such as a country's predominant botanical strain, the predominant style of processing, etc -- give way to the "general characteristics" that have long defined the flavor profile of regions or countries. On top of that, the history of testing all of those characteristics to determine what the "individual" quality of a given botanical is under average conditions -- something wine has been able to do to a point that we know what specific clones of Cabernet will do in clay, loam, and sand under various elevations and environments -- does not exist in a way that gives us something more than "Bourbons tend to be sweeter, cleaner" or "Jember tend to be earthy and herbal". A lot of coffee cultivars were bred specifically for certain conditions (SL-28, et al) or for specific resistance to diseases (Catimor), and so flavor in some varieties were not entirely a consideration. So to have this argument -- which says more, country of origin or botanical cultivar, is somewhat unnecessary. 

Now granted, this is changing -- individual farms, processors and co-ops are experimenting or examining individual cultivars, creating seperated lots, or trying different styles of processing (the 2008-9 craze of honey processing and Central American natural processing, anyone?). This degree of exploration is allowing the process of cataloguing to begin on an individual farm level (the way individual chateau do so in wine-making) and in certain cases creating national registers such as what Anacafe in Guatemala has been doing for a few years now. That all said, we need to keep an open mind when talking about the notion of which comes first -- the country or the cultivar. (The farm, for the moment, will stay out of this particular conversation, though as in wine, it can have a mixed record of use in terms of consumer utility.)

This brings me to the three samples of bourbon I've had the chance over the last week or so to sample: Stumptown's El Injerto Bourbon (Guatemala, Washed), Counter Culture's Varietal: Bourbon (a blend of two bourbons -- Guatemala and El Salvador, both washed) and the MadCap Coffee Varietal Series El Porvenir (which is Bourbon with trace amounts of Typica, all washed). All three were sampled from days 4 - 15 post-roast, stored appropriately, and done either as V60 pour-overs or as Japanese-style iced coffee (hot-brew). All three bags emphasize that these are rooted in the varietal / botanical cultivar of coffee and are supposed to be representative of the cultivar in question, in this case Bourbon.

Here's where things get tricky. Bourbon is not a uniform class of coffee -- there are a number of sub-cultivars and mutations that exist in its class. Orange, Yellow, Red and "pink" Bourbon exist, as well as a number of cultivars ("Kent") that are taken as Bourbon but do represent in some cases a biologically distinct cultivar. All coffees are washed, which I won't take argument with here (based upon distinctions that may exist in certain cases, but largely speaking we considered the processing here to be a constant). Also in consideration but not weighted was soil -- all the farms connected here have differing soil types, elevations, and enrichment programs (speaking for El Porvenir, there is an extensive composting and enrichment program that exists at all of Gloria's farms). Lastly, the roasters in question are all qualified, and all produce awesome product. Aside from regional distinctions in roasting profiles, we also considered these constants, of a sort.

The reason I raise the points above -- all three were distinctly different coffees. El Injerto was a bright, snappy, deeply citrus-and-olive oil affair, fruity with a balance familiar to coffees from Huehuetenango; the El Porvenir deeply chocolately, heavy bodied, and unctuous, with a kirsch-like element; and the Varietal Bourbon was the most balanced and delicate of the bunch, with an elegant acidity and a mild spice-cake like finish. These are three radically different taste profiles coming from 3 roasters (4 farms total) from 2 countries (Guatemala and El Salvador) and 2 regions (Huehuetenango and Apaneca-Illanpatec). From this view, its hard to say that there is/was a firm case that arguing cultivar is a key way to inform consumers when the notion of what those cultivars do -- in conjunction with all those other stages -- can be so very distinct. This is not a criticism of cultivar-centric labelling or projects, but as coffee pros we need to be open to the ways in which coffee, and the ways we manipulate it, can be as individual and distinct as the people who grow it. I'll get the taste clouds posted soon -- Squarespace is having an issue bringing them up, but I'm sure they'd be insightful.