King's Coffee is so famous, what is the origin of the name?

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In 1810 (some historical evidence may actually be earlier), on the island of Bourbon (Reunion) in the Indian Ocean, a sailor named Leroy discovered a strange coffee tree shaped a bit like a Christmas tree. The fruit of this kind of tree is also pointed, although it will become slightly round when ripe, but the peeled raw coffee beans are still sharp and thin.

The coffee grown on Bourbon Island at that time was named "Bourbon Coffee" and was a very important branch of Arabica Coffee. The coffee bean found by Leroy is actually a variant of bourbon.

The coffee made from this bean is almost bitterless, has a very high sweetness and has a particularly strong fruit flavor, including citrus, sweet tangerine and even litchi. Therefore, it was very popular with the French at that time. So the French named this coffee "the King's Coffee (Cafe du Roy)" in the name of Louis XIV, the king of the sun.

After the French Revolution, "king" became an inappropriate word, so people called the coffee "Cafe Leroy" after the discoverer's name. Today, the official name of this coffee is better known as "Laurina" or "Bourbon Pointu".

Sharp-bodied bourbon is a natural low-caffeinated bean, with a caffeine content of only about 0.5% to 0.7%, much lower than the average Arabica variety. This is the reason for its low bitterness, high sweetness and delicious flavor, and it is also its most fatal deficiency.

Because caffeine is actually a means of self-defense used by coffee as a plant defense against diseases and insect pests, the pointed bourbon with low caffeine is destined to be a delicate princess. Once high production, ravaged by diseases and insect pests, fell to the bottom at the beginning of the 20th century and almost disappeared from the world coffee market.

Fortunately, in the 21 century, a famous "coffee hunter" Yoshihiro Kawashima rediscovered a high-quality bourbon pointed plant during his bean-hunting journey, and this variety was restored after several years. In 2007, bourbon pointed body finally reappeared in the world coffee market.