Is There Something Suspicious About Hainan Coffee Bean Production? How Are Hainan Coffee Beans? Are They Expensive?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange.

The Real Xinglong Coffee Problem

Walk into almost any supermarket in Hainan and you will meet a wall of local coffee brands: Xinglong Mountain Coffee, Xinglong Authentic Coffee, Xinglong Charcoal Roasted Coffee, Xinglong Pure Coffee, and more, each one claiming to be the genuine article. Read the labels carefully, though, and the beans often trace back to Haikou, Qionghai, Wenchang, or somewhere else entirely. "Strictly speaking, these are all counterfeit Xinglong products. If the government does not step in, they will eventually ruin the Xinglong coffee brand," said Qiu Xiaofeng, president of the Xinglong Coffee Industry Association, in a media interview. Because genuine output is so limited, he explained, much of what reaches the market under the Xinglong name is actually made from imported green coffee. It cannot match real Xinglong coffee in taste or quality, yet it still drags the brand's reputation down.

Geographical Indication Protection

Under the Wanning City Xinglong Coffee Geographical Indication Management Measures, "Xinglong coffee" refers to coffee grown in Xinglong, within Wanning City, and in the surrounding townships of Nanqiao, Changfeng, Sangengluo, and Liji. In December 2007, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine issued Announcement No. 209, placing Xinglong coffee under geographical indication product protection. In August 2015, the Wanning Xinglong Coffee Industry Association formally applied to the State Administration for Market Regulation for the Xinglong coffee geographical indication certification trademark.

Market Reality and the Production Gap

The government has not yet enforced these measures strictly, which allows coffee grown elsewhere to be labeled and sold as Xinglong coffee. Market managers and vendors understand the situation perfectly well: if the rules were applied to the letter, Xinglong's own output could never come close to meeting tourists' appetite for local specialties.

A 2013 tropical crop forecast from the Hainan Provincial Department of Agriculture put the province's coffee planting area at 6,000 mu that year, with total coffee bean production expected to reach only 200 tons. Yet Hainan sells at least 6,000 tons of coffee every year. That staggering gap between production and sales pushed Wanning City to introduce the Wanning City Support Plan for Xinglong Coffee Industry Development, which starts at the cultivation stage by offering farmers a planting subsidy of 2,000 yuan per mu along with free seedlings. The local government is clearly doing everything it can to back the industry. Even so, Huang Haisheng, chairman of a local coffee company, told a Farmers Daily reporter that the fresh coffee cherries genuinely grown in Xinglong do not exceed 40 tons a year. At the 5:1 ratio of fresh cherries to raw beans, that works out to less than 10 tons of dried green coffee.

Future Development Plans

Hainan's coffee industry is centered on Xinglong. At this February's Two Sessions, Zhang Meiwen, Secretary of Wanning City, said that Wanning currently has 6,000 mu planted with Xinglong coffee and aims to expand that to 10,000 mu by 2020, with a long-term target of 50,000 mu. If those figures hold up, Wanning's present planted area is already on par with a small-to-medium coffee plantation in Yunnan.

So how can such a tiny production base possibly satisfy such enormous market demand?

FrontStreet Coffee is a roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but a remarkably varied lineup of beans. You can find both famous and lesser-known origins there, and it also offers online store services.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you want a coffee that sits in the middle of the flavor spectrum, front-loading neither acidity nor bitterness, medium roasts are the place to start. Roasting darker pushes a bean toward bitterness and a heavier body, while roasting lighter pushes it toward acidity and a thinner mouthfeel, so a medium roast is the sweet spot for a balanced cup.

FrontStreet's Brazil Queen's Estate coffee is a good example: grown in Brazil, the world's largest coffee-producing country, it is a distinctive Yellow Bourbon, gentle and sweet, and after a medium roast it shows creamy peanut, chocolate, toasted bread, and sugarcane. It performs equally well as a pour-over, in a moka pot, or in an espresso machine. For something sweeter, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy is a Gesha blend built from two celebrated origins in Central and South America, a honey-processed Costa Rican coffee and a washed Panamanian Gesha. FrontStreet roasts it medium to bring out both orange-blossom honey and a rounded sweetness, and it shines in cold brew, pour-over, and espresso alike.

FrontStreet's 2013 Sun-Dried Typica is a Chinese specialty coffee with the classic character of a Yunnan small-lot bean. Roasted medium to keep its balance gentle and soft, it offers nut, brown sugar, black tea, and dried apricot notes and suits pour-over, cold brew, and drip machines. FrontStreet Jamaica Blue Mountain No. 1 is another medium roast, and for good reason: this Typica, grown in Jamaica's Blue Mountains under exceptional conditions, brings acidity, bitterness, sweetness, and body together into that signature refined, elegant cup, with chocolate, roasted nuts, cream, and caramel at first sip.

Whatever your preference, FrontStreet keeps a range of medium roasts on hand so you can match the bean to the brewing method and the flavor profile you actually enjoy.