How We Found Blush: A Rare Red Bourbon Coffee in Flores
A 50cc scooter, 600 miles across Flores, and a coffee we couldn’t forget.
I went to Flores looking for exceptional coffee. What I found was a reminder that some of the most interesting coffees aren't the easiest ones to find.
Somewhere along the journey, my search led me to Monika—a coffee farmer growing something I hadn’t encountered before.
So I got on my 50cc scooter.
Some coffees are easy to find. The unforgettable ones rarely are.
Coffee first.
When I arrived, Monika did what people so often do in Indonesia when you enter their home. She served me something. Coffee, of course.
She brought out the green coffee she had grown and processed herself, and even before we ever roasted it, the care behind it was visible.
Monika was particularly proud that her coffee was washed several times.
For anyone unfamiliar with coffee processing, the way a coffee cherry is transformed into the green seed we eventually roast has an enormous influence on the final cup. Indonesia is especially well known for wet-hulled coffee, particularly from Sumatra, but coffee regions across Indonesia have different growing and processing traditions. Monika had chosen a fully washed approach, carefully washing her coffee several times.
It was one of the first things that caught my attention. But coffee quickly gave way to something else: hospitality. That evening, we ate dinner at her daughter’s house. The family prepared three dishes for us, and we sat together talking late into the night.
Monika has four daughters, all entrepreneurs themselves. She is not only a farmer, but a matriarch and elder within her community.
I had arrived looking for coffee. Instead, I was being welcomed into a family.
The next morning, we walked.
Monika took me through her coffee farms.
We met some of the people who help care for the plants throughout the season—watching their health, pruning them, and tending the land.
Her approach to farming was remarkably simple. No synthetic pesticides. No added fertilizer. Organic material from the coffee cherries themselves is returned to the land. Then she showed me a much smaller section of the farm.
Red Bourbon.
That got my attention.
Coffee, like wine grapes or apples, comes in different varieties. Red Bourbon is an Arabica coffee variety known for its potential for sweetness and complexity under the right growing conditions. It’s one example of the remarkable variety found within Indonesian specialty coffee.
Finding it here, on this small farm in Flores, was unexpected. And there wasn't much of it.
Compared with Monika's other coffees, this was a tiny production. Red Bourbon can produce less than some varieties selected for higher yields, which matters when a farmer's livelihood depends on what the land produces.
But sometimes the less practical coffee is the one worth paying attention to.
I wanted to know what this one could become.
I took what I could carry.
There was, however, a logistical problem. I was traveling Flores on a 50cc scooter. So I packed as many kilos of coffee samples onto it as I reasonably could and continued down the road.
Monika and I stayed in touch.
Her coffees eventually made their way from her farms in Flores to us in the United States—and became customer favorites at Segara.
But that small lot of Red Bourbon stayed in my mind.
When we finally had the opportunity to explore it more closely, we found something remarkably expressive: a coffee with vivid fruit, a silky mouthfeel, and notes that reminded us unmistakably of watermelon and strawberry biscuit.
We called it Blush.
Nothing was flavored. Nothing was added. That character was already inside the coffee.
What does single-origin coffee really mean?
Technically, single origin tells you that a coffee comes from one particular origin rather than being blended from coffees of different origins.
But for Segara, it means something more tangible.
It means knowing where a coffee came from. Knowing the variety growing there. Walking among the trees. Drinking coffee at the farmer's table. Meeting the family behind it.
And sometimes, loading a few precious kilos onto a tiny scooter because you have a feeling you've found something worth bringing home.
Monika had never exported her coffee before we met. She was excited by the possibility that something she had grown in Flores could be enjoyed by people thousands of miles away in America.
Eventually, it was.
Blush became our expression of Monika’s Red Bourbon from Flores—and one chapter in our continuing exploration of the island’s remarkable coffees.
Today, we continue to work with distinctive coffees from Flores, each showing a different side of what this island can produce.