DRIED RED BOURBON AND SUDAN RUME COFFEE BLOSSOM PETAL TEA.
We recently attended a coffee cupping attended by a major specialist coffee importer, and got conversing with Licensed Q Grade, Coffee Trader, Priscilla, about tea… Obviously it was a conversation about Coffee Blossom Tea, something I knew a little about but wondered if she knew anything herself, not only did she know about it but had some… It transpired that Café Granja La Esperanza , one of our favourite Colombian Coffee Growers and Exporters, has been gathering the petals as they fall from the coffee bushes, (as simple as clean white sheets laid on the ground) and then carefully drying them. La Esperanza is famous in coffee circles for its dedicated research into different varieties, clones and cultivars and their growth and quality relative to the terroir. They have collected petals from seven different varieties; Red Bourbon, Sudan Rume, Geisha, Red Bourbon Tekisic, Yellow Bourbon, Laurina and Pacamara, and Priscilla was able to send a small quantity of the Red Bourbon and the Sudan Rume.
Bourbon Coffee Trees, depending on cultivar, can produce equally as well as the typical Red Cherry also Yellow and Orange. The trees all originated from the island of Bourbon, now Réunion, and they were planted around 1708 by the French from stock given to them by the Dutch. Sudan Rume is a rarely found variety that originated in south-eastern Sudan near to the Ethiopian border.
All these seven aromatic Tisanes differ, producing complex and flavourful aromatic teas. We have no prices for the teas but they will not be cheap, the petals weigh very little and are collected by simple collection methods but at the obvious vagaries of winds and breezes sweeping the dried petals off the sheets.
