Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Review: Bourbon Coffee D.C.

A colleague of mine suggested that I check out a new coffee shop near our office called Bourbon Coffee. If your reaction is the same as mine, you would of course wonder why it is called "Bourbon". It sounds more like a liquor store than a coffee joint. A quick Wikipedia search revealed the following:

Bourbon coffee is a type of coffee produced from the Bourbon cultivar of the Coffea arabica species of coffee plant. Bourbon coffee was first produced in Réunion, which was known as Île Bourbon before 1789. It was later taken by the French to mainland Africa and to Latin America, and is now one of the two most popular Arabica coffees grown worldwide. Bourbon coffee is usually produced at heights between 3,500 and 6,500 feet.





The Bourbon Coffee shop at 2101 L Street NW in D.C took advantage of a recently shuttered Starbucks and used the same space to launch its first U.S. store after opening two successful stores in Rwanda. As I and a colleague visited today, we discussed how this store was going to be able to survive when the Starbucks in the same location could not. I think the answer is in the coffee.

My colleague tried a plain drip and I ordered an espresso machiato. True to the regional roots of this coffee maker, the brew was earthy with a slight acidity to give it a little bite, but not too much. Another friend at work mentioned that this earthy taste comes from the process used in this region of Africa. The coffee cherry is left on while the beans dry.

If you are looking for the same clean coffee house feel you get at a Starbucks,  with an African twist and a taste that settles some place in the middle of Starbucks and Illy, this is a great way to mix things up.




5 comments:

Coffee Messiah said...

Bourbon coffee is quite good. We had a coffeehouse, which I post about every now and then throughout my blog, and we learned a lot, and are quite snobby, actually ; (

And, having worked at SB for 2 yrs, in hopes of moving back to the west coast, I learned all too well of their practices, not what you hear in the media. In a nutshell, there's a reason turnover is big.

As you mentioned, you can count on the same quality when you go there, but I keep finding that people who really love coffee, work at independents.

This sounds like a good place.

Cheers!

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