Yunnan Premium Coffee Beans: China's Own Fine Coffee and FrontStreet Coffee's 2013 Origin Story

FrontStreet Coffee Yunnan FrontStreet 2013

Country of Origin: China
Region: Yunnan, Lincang
Variety: Typica
Altitude: 1300 meters
Processing Method: Natural
Roast Level: Medium roast
Flavor Profile: Nuts, berries, brown sugar, a tea-like sensation.

Lincang City

Lincang City lies in the southwestern part of Yunnan Province, with the Tropic of Cancer crossing its southern edge. It borders Puer to the east, Dali to the north and Baoshan to the west, with Myanmar to the southwest. Named for its proximity to the Lancang River, it is a bright pearl on China's southwestern frontier. Lincang's average annual temperature ranges between 16.8°C and 17.2°C, with distinct wet and dry seasons and abundant sunshine.

Coffee Bean Introduction

FrontStreet Coffee has been roasting coffee for about 8 years, while our involvement in coffee cultivation has run 8 and a half years — yes, half a year longer than we have been roasting.

FrontStreet Coffee began as "Dazhen Coffee." We chose that name because we wanted to grow coffee in a place called Dazhen in Guangdong province. After we had grown Catimor seedlings to 20CM, half a year had passed before we finally understood the relationship and the right sequence between variety, altitude and processing method. Choose the right variety, plant it at the appropriate altitude, and after maturity experiment with processing methods that can express unique flavors — this, I believe, is the only logical relationship that lets specialty coffee carry a distinct regional flavor, and it is also the work led by the Yunnan Department of Agriculture: establishing a flavor map of Yunnan specialty coffee, which means identifying the regional flavors Yunnan specialty coffee ought to have. So we gave up our plan to grow coffee in Guangdong. Our original roasting site opened on FrontStreet Street in Bao'an, so we renamed "Dazhen Coffee" to "FrontStreet Coffee."

Yunnan currently has over 2 million mu of coffee, most of it developed between 2010-2011 on the back of a spike in coffee prices. Yunnan coffee was positioned to supply raw coffee material, so growers all chose high-yield Catimor, a hybrid variety. We, however, wanted to understand how Typica and Bourbon perform in Yunnan, so it was unlikely we would simply buy ready-made Yunnan coffee land. We could only start growing coffee from scratch, through breeding. The reason various processing methods are now popular in Yunnan coffee is largely that growers originally planted Catimor, which amounts to a shortcut for highlighting post-processing flavor without changing variety or altitude.

At FrontStreet Coffee, while roasting coffee, we kept pushing ahead with our ideas for specialty coffee cultivation, visiting people with deep knowledge of coffee growing, the Tropical Agricultural Science Research Institute (which houses the Ministry of Agriculture's coffee germplasm bank), and a few coffee farmers who grow specialty coffee. We clarified why Yunnan does not grow mainstream specialty varieties such as Typica and Bourbon, and by chance found suitable land to cultivate.

If all we wanted was a ready-made coffee estate of our own, it would actually be easy. Yunnan coffee farmers have long been reluctant to grow coffee because the labor cost per kilogram for picking is higher than the selling price. Unless there is surplus labor at home, they are unwilling to pick even when the coffee is ripe. At that point, buying a small piece of land from a farmer before harvest and then doing some natural processing, honey processing and so on would give you Yunnan specialty coffee in two or three months. We don't know whether this controversial practice is right. As the former director of Yunnan Coffee commented in an earlier article: "The current situation of over one million mu of Catimor in the Yunnan region is the main problem we urgently need to transform and improve. So having debate is a good thing, but we cannot negate all our current efforts."

In the fog, FrontStreet Coffee deliberately chose the most difficult path: selecting high altitude, growing Arabica varieties and planting reasonably.

Yunnan has no four seasons, only a dry season and a rainy season, and most coffee-growing regions share similar conditions, which is also a fundamental reason some areas use natural processing. June marks the start of the rainy season in the producing regions, and the next three to four months will be rainy — the most favorable period for growing coffee. Only by planting seedlings at this time, with several months of moisture from the rain, can they develop well-formed root systems able to survive the first six-month dry season. The seedlings we chose for this batch are Typica, and the copper-colored new leaves they sprout are their characteristic. Typica yields very little, only one-third of Catimor's yield, which is why it is more expensive. Typica and Bourbon are also highly susceptible to coffee leaf rust, one of the reasons farmers are unwilling to grow Arabica.

Because time was tight, we prepared the seedlings in the nursery a year in advance for this batch, to make sure they had a good growth foundation when planted. This is normally done within one to two months after the previous season's harvest, and over that year we apply appropriate water and fertilizer control to prevent overly rapid growth, ensuring the highest germination rate while keeping the seedling's main root from growing so long that it has to be cut when planted out in the coffee garden.

We hope that on the path of coffee we can walk wider and farther, with our own specialty coffee.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Yunnan FrontStreet 2013 is the natural-process Typica from FrontStreet's own Lincang estate — the bean that answers the question of how a classic Arabica variety performs in Yunnan. If you want to taste the regional character at its simplest, the FrontStreet Yunnan Baoshan small-bean coffee comes from the Baoshan region, washed and roasted medium, with soft nut and chocolate sweetness and a light plum acidity, at a price that makes it many drinkers' first Yunnan coffee.

The two together make the clearest comparison of what processing does to Yunnan Typica: the Baoshan lot is washed, giving it the origin's clean signature, while the FrontStreet 2013 Natural Typica is dried in the whole fruit, which adds darker berry notes, caramel sweetness, chocolate and a hint of dried apricot, finishing on black tea. Yunnan also works beautifully in espresso — the FrontStreet Black Cocoa blend combines Yunnan small-bean with Brazil Cerrado, so Brazil supplies mixed-nut aroma and balance while Yunnan brings chocolate and citrus, giving an Americano that is even across sweet, sour and bitter and a latte with the smoothness of almond and cream.