The Story of Yunnan Coffee Development: Top Brands and Brewing Methods

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The Development History of Yunnan Coffee

● Three Historical Channels of Coffee Introduction

Coffee has been introduced to Yunnan for over a hundred years. At that time, it entered Yunnan through three different methods: introduction by foreign missionaries, brought in as part of dowries from border ethnic intermarriages, and introduction by the French who built the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway.

● Introduction by Foreign Missionaries:

The well-documented Zhukula coffee in Pingchuan Town, Binchuan County, Dali, was brought in by French missionary Tian Deneng and planted next to the church. The documented time is 1902 (though the Pingchuan Town Gazetteer states it was 1892), and the cultivated variety was Typica. Besides Zhukula coffee, there were actually coffees brought in by missionaries in other areas of Yunnan. Many elderly people in Pu'er have seen or heard of such old coffee in Donghe Township, Lancang County, Pu'er, which is also said to be over a hundred years old. However, due to local lack of awareness, it was cut down in 2012.

● Brought in Through Border Ethnic Intermarriage Dowries:

Longxian Village in Yingjiang County, Dehong, still preserves coffee brought in as a dowry from Myanmar when Jingpo people intermarried in 1914, also of the Typica variety.

● Introduction by French Railway Builders:

Along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, from the border Hekou County to Kaiyuan City, there are descendants of coffee brought in during railway construction that can still be seen today as landscape trees in residential courtyards or parks. These are also Typica and Bourbon varieties.

● First Large-Scale Cultivation

The large-scale cultivation of coffee in Yunnan began in the 1960s. At that time, to repay loans from the Soviet Union, coffee was cultivated by Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation, with products purchased by the national foreign trade department. Coffee cultivation was distributed across several agricultural reclamation farms: Baoshan Lujiang Farm, Xincheng Youth Farm, Dehong Zhefang Farm, Ruili Farm, Wanding Farm, Wenshan Babu Farm, and Tianbao Farm. The varieties were locally propagated Typica and Bourbon variants. The entire coffee cultivation area of the agricultural reclamation system reached 50,000 mu. Later, due to the completion of repayment work and the foreign trade department no longer actively purchasing, combined with disease infection and spread causing large-scale deaths and为了避免疯狂传播而砍伐, the cultivation area once shrank to less than 3,000 mu.

● Second Large-Scale Cultivation

In the 1980s, Nestlé (Dongmei) signed a coffee cultivation cooperation agreement with the Simao Prefecture Administrative Office (now the Pu'er Municipal Government) and established the Yunnan Agricultural Department to help local farmers and enterprises cultivate coffee, with a total area reaching tens of thousands of mu. However, due to overly rapid short-term cultivation and insufficient technical popularization, ultimately less than 30,000 mu were maintained.

● Third Large-Scale Cultivation

Around the same period, the Yunnan Provincial Government, to fully utilize Yunnan's unique biological resources for sustainable economic development, established a dedicated provincial government "Bioresource Industry Sustainable Development Office" and designated coffee as one of the first development projects. I participated as the project leader. Due to the support and direct leadership of the provincial government, coupled with Nestlé's technical support that made steady progress, Yunnan's coffee cultivation area began to show a trend of year-by-year expansion from that time forward - from several tens of thousands of mu, to over 100,000 mu, to several hundred thousand mu, until today's over one million mu. Production capacity went from several thousand tons to over 10,000 tons, until today's nearly 100,000 tons. At a provincial coffee symposium, Fessler from Nestlé's Agricultural Department once said: The large-scale development of Yunnan coffee should be attributed to the support of two technical forces that deserve recognition: Nestlé and Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation.

● China-UNDP Coffee Project

In 1986, Long Yongtu, Director of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and the China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges, represented the Chinese government in signing a coffee support cooperation project with UNDP. This project was implemented in Yunnan, with content covering varieties, breeding, cultivation, primary processing, and deep processing. Both parties jointly investigated suitable planting areas in the country, finally determining Yunnan as the location and designating Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation to represent the Chinese government in executing the project. From that time, Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation's coffee entered a higher stage in terms of technical level. As part of the project content, the Yunnan Coffee Factory also began preparations at the end of 1989. During project implementation, UNDP repeatedly arranged coffee experts to assist at Yunnan Agricultural Reclamation farms, Tropical Crop Research Institute, and Yunnan Coffee Factory. Among these, they specially hired ICO cupping expert Kari to stay at the factory for two weeks to train all staff.

● Recommended Yunnan Coffee Brands

FrontStreet Coffee's roasted small-bean Typica Yunnan coffee beans - [Yunnan Huaguoshan Coffee] offer full guarantees in both brand and quality. More importantly, they provide extremely high value for money. A half-pound (227g) package costs only about 60 yuan. Calculated at 15 grams of coffee powder per cup, one package can make 15 cups of coffee, with each cup costing only about 4 yuan. Compared to coffee shops selling cups for dozens of yuan each, this is truly a conscientious recommendation.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small storefront but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans. They also provide online store services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473