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Yunnan Coffee Price List and Pictures: How are Yunnan Coffee Beans? How Much is a Cup of Yunnan Coffee?

Published: 2026-01-28 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/28, Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account cafe_style). Yunnan Coffee Beans: Small Bean Coffee [Scientific Name] Small bean species is Coffea arabica L., medium bean species is Coffea canephora, large bean species is Coffea liberica. Family and Genus: Rubiaceae Coffee Genus. [Alias] Small bean species also known as Arabica species, medium bean species also known as Canephora.

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For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style)

Yunnan Coffee Beans - Small Bean Coffee

Scientific Name

Small bean variety: Coffea arabica L., medium bean variety: Coffea canephora, large bean variety: Coffea liberica

Family and Genus

Rubiaceae family, Coffee genus

Alternate Names

Small bean variety also known as Arabica, medium bean variety also known as Robusta, large bean variety also known as Liberica

Common varieties mainly include 2 types: Arabica and Robusta. Coffee contains rich proteins, fats, sucrose, as well as starch, caffeine and other substances. When made into beverages, it has rich aroma, pleasant taste, and abundant nutrition, thus becoming one of the world's three major beverages along with tea and cocoa, ranking at the top.

Yunnan coffee belongs to the variant of the Arabica original species, formed through long-term cultivation and domestication, generally called Yunnan small bean coffee, with over a hundred years of cultivation history.

Morphological Characteristics

Small tree or large shrub, 5-8 meters tall. Usually with multiple branches at the base, old branches are grayish-white. Nodes are swollen, young branches are hairless. Leaves are thin leathery, ovate-lanceolate or lanceolate, with long gradual taper at the apex, wedge-shaped or slightly blunt at the base, entire edges or with shallow wavy patterns, hairless on both surfaces. Several cymes cluster in leaf axils, corolla is white and aromatic. Berries are broadly elliptical when ripe, red, 1.2-1.6 cm long, seeds 0.8-1.0 cm long. Flowering period is March to April.

Origin and Distribution

Native to Ethiopia or the Arabian Peninsula. Cultivated in Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Hainan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan.

Yunnan small bean coffee has mellow flavor and fragrant aroma, with excellent taste, worth taking home to savor carefully. There is a branch store each at the entrance of Xinhua Street in Lijiang Old Town and next to Jiuding Dragon Pool in Shuhe Ancient Town. Especially the Shuhe store has good service and excellent atmosphere. Due to the relationship with Boss Huihui of Lotus Inn, we enjoyed an 18% discount at the old town store and brought back two pounds of coffee beans to Taipei in one go. When visiting the Shuhe store, besides tasting coffee, we also purchased a set of manual coffee brewing tools and brought half a pound of coffee to Maggie's Home.

Yunnan's Catimor Variety

According to the Coffee Research website, Catimor is a hybrid of the Timor variety (which can resist rust disease) and the Caturra variety.

Its main characteristics are earlier harvest and higher yield than other Arabica varieties for the same planting area. Therefore, special attention must be paid to fertilization and shading...

The more criticized aspect of Catimor is that "the taste is not as excellent as other Arabica varieties," especially in high-altitude areas above 1000 meters.

Dr. E. Illy once said: Don't plant Catimor because it has 25% Robusta genes. Although it can resist rust disease, it also brings undesirable flavor... Costa Rica and Colombia suffered disastrous consequences due to planting Catimor. However, Thailand is said to have cultivated Catimor varieties with good taste.

In 2003, I received materials from SCAA, which introduced the overview of Yunnan's production areas, and indeed pointed out that the main variety planted in this area is Catimor.

According to Huidian Market Research Report, Yunnan coffee belongs to the variant of the Arabica original species, formed through long-term cultivation and domestication, generally called Yunnan small bean coffee, with over a hundred years of cultivation history. Most Yunnan coffee is planted in dry-hot valley areas around 1100 meters altitude, so it has moderate acidity, rich aroma, and mellow taste.

In terms of climatic conditions, southern Yunnan has long sunshine hours, which is beneficial for plant growth and photosynthesis. Moreover, the large temperature difference between day and night and low night temperatures are conducive to the accumulation of coffee nutrients. Therefore, Yunnan small bean coffee contains higher effective nutritional components than other foreign coffee varieties.

Due to the excellent quality of Yunnan coffee, it entered the London market in the 1960s as "Lujiang No. 1" and was rated as first-grade product.

Yunnan small bean coffee, due to its unique geographical environment and climatic conditions, has formed a unique flavor that is rich but not bitter, fragrant but not strong, with a hint of fruitiness. World-class coffee experts have evaluated it as the best coffee in the world, and its cultivation techniques and yield per unit are also world-class.

In recent years, world-renowned international giants such as Nestlé, Maxwell House, and Starbucks have all come to Yunnan to establish raw material bases, and products from Yunnan have gradually gained reputation at home and abroad.

Dr. Steinthes, a chief coffee expert from the United Nations Development Programme, after visiting the coffee plantation at Lujiang Farm, said: "I have seen countless coffee plantations around the world. The management here is world-class, and the yield per unit is also the highest."

Commercial cultivation of Yunnan coffee can be traced back to 1985, but the scale was very limited. In 1995, the Yunnan provincial government formally included coffee cultivation in the "18 Biotechnology Projects," and coffee cultivation began to develop rapidly. In 1998, the "Opinions of the Yunnan Provincial People's Government on Accelerating the Development of the Coffee Industry" was issued, and the coffee industry finally ushered in development opportunities.

However, due to limited technical level, Yunnan coffee has been in the raw material supply stage for many years. Although Yunnan small bean coffee is famous overseas, most of the profits have been taken by foreign coffee giants.

As early as the 1980s, Yunnan small bean coffee attracted Nestlé to establish coffee cultivation farms in Pu'er. By 1997, Yunnan was able to supply all the small bean coffee raw materials needed by Nestlé, no longer needing to import from abroad. Yunnan has become a world-renowned high-quality coffee bean production base and has attracted many coffee buyers to purchase coffee beans.

Currently, Yunnan's coffee beans are supplied to the world's five major coffee giants—Nestlé, Maxwell House, American Kraft Foods, German Neumann, and Danish Ecom. Currently, Yunnan's small bean coffee cultivation area reaches 490,000 mu, with a production of over 42,000 tons, becoming China's largest coffee production area. Yunnan's 12th Five-Year Plan proposes to increase the coffee cultivation area to 1 million mu and production to 100,000 tons. Yunnan bears 98% of China's coffee cultivation and export.

In recent years, Yunnan coffee has been committed to developing from raw material supply to deep processing. Not only has it established its own instant coffee production line, but its self-created Chinese coffee brand—Hougu Coffee—has also begun to gain consumer favor in the market.

Currently, there are only four coffee deep processing plants in China: Hougu, Lishen, Nestlé, and Maxwell House. Nestlé's production line in Guangzhou has a capacity of 2000 tons, Maxwell House 1000 tons, Hainan's Lishen is almost negligible, and the total annual production capacity does not even reach 700 tons. In the past two years, Yunnan Hougu Coffee Co., Ltd. has become the largest instant coffee powder producer in China, with a production capacity of over 13,000 tons.

2010 was an unexpectedly good year for Yunnan spice growers, as the purchase prices of various spices generally rose, and the increase was not small. The causal relationship with this good news is that the area of spice cultivation in various parts of Yunnan has shrunk sharply under the temptation of cash crops such as tea, coffee, and fruits... Yanbao didn't know that Yunnan was also struggling with its small bean coffee.

Local Yunnan media reported: Good quality and low price has become a lingering shadow for Yunnan coffee. As a new player in the international coffee market, Yunnan coffee has not enjoyed the reasonable return of "you get what you pay for" for various reasons. But I feel it is still repeating the mistakes of the spice industry, similar to rough processing without pursuit of excellence, similar to encountering technical barriers from resource importers or completely losing bargaining power, similar to disorderly competition within the industry and fierce price wars...

In the market ecosystem, Yunnan products are at the most initial link. Logically speaking, such an unfavorable position especially needs to solve the distribution problem. The purpose of small profits should be large sales volume, but the reality is that Yunnan coffee, on top of the old problem of "being well-praised but not selling at a good price," has added the new worry of "insufficient production." It is said that the annual global coffee demand is about 130 million bags (60 kg/bag), while Yunnan's coffee production is only around 25,000-30,000 tons.

No worry about selling, can't sell at a good price, and finally not enough to sell... Actually, Yunnan spices share the same fate.

Yunnan Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

Yunnan coffee beans roasted by FrontStreet Coffee, the washed Typica Huaguoshan variety, have full guarantees in terms of brand and quality. More importantly, the cost-performance ratio is extremely high. A half-pound (227 grams) package costs only about 69 yuan. Calculated at 15 grams of powder per cup of coffee, one package can make 15 cups of coffee, with each cup costing less than 5 yuan. Compared with the price of dozens of yuan per cup sold in coffee shops, this is a conscientious recommendation.