Another Virtual Tour of FrontStreet Coffee's Yunnan Coffee Estate! What's the Most Famous Coffee from Yunnan?

A Quiet Town After Conflict

At the beginning of this month, as the Myanmar military retreated and the Northern Heaven Gate in Kokang was finally recaptured by the Allied Forces, the battle that had lasted for more than two months gradually subsided. Despite this, when we arrived at the small town, the national border gate was still closed, with almost no pedestrians on the roads. Most intersections still had soldiers and special police on duty, and apart from them, the area was deserted.

Coffee Cultivation and Altitude

For every 100 meters increase in altitude, the temperature decreases by 0.6 degrees Celsius. Plant fruits need to accumulate sufficient heat to mature. Generally speaking, the longer they remain on the tree, the more substances they attract, resulting in more diverse coffee flavors.

The maturation period for coffee at low altitudes in Yunnan begins in October each year. The altitude of FrontStreet Coffee's plantation is not particularly high, but because it grows within a forest, the overall temperature is relatively lower with less sunlight, so the coffee only begins to mature gradually in early January. This means that from October of the previous year to March of this year constitutes the harvest season for this region.

The History of FrontStreet Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee was originally called "Dazhen Coffee." The reason for this name was that Frontsteet initially wanted to plant coffee in a place called "Dazhen" in Guangdong Province. At that time, understanding of coffee and its cultivation was minimal, driven purely by passion. Therefore, the early "Frontsteet" experimentally planted Catimor in the Dazhen region, but quickly moved the cultivation site from Guangdong to Yunnan, and switched from the common Catimor to Typica.

Typica plants in the forest~

Factors for Quality Coffee Cultivation

The cultivation of good coffee is closely related to variety, altitude, and processing methods. To grow delicious coffee, the first step is selecting the variety, followed by the growing terroir. The environmental climate of the growing area affects the substance content when coffee matures. As mentioned earlier, high altitude is key to good coffee. Many places in Guangdong have altitudes of only a few hundred meters, while Kunming starts at 2,000 meters immediately upon landing.

Another reason why many places are not suitable for coffee cultivation is that the Siberian cold current continues to move south in winter. The ensuing frost can kill coffee trees in mountainous areas in just two days. This is why the golden coffee cultivation belt is mainly distributed between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropic of Cancer in Guangdong is located in Conghua. North of this line, frost occurs almost every year. Although Yunnan is also relatively northern, the Gaoligong Mountains to the north happen to block this cold current. The high-altitude areas divide this plateau into numerous small climate types. On the 12th when we were in Kunming, the local temperature was only about 4 degrees Celsius at 6 AM, but by 10 AM, it had reached 16 degrees.

Journey to the Plantation

From Kunming to FrontStreet Coffee's plantation is about 800 kilometers, mostly mountain roads, requiring about 9-10 hours of driving. In the past 10 years, we have traveled this route back and forth about 3-4 times each year: before the rainy season begins, during flowering, and after the rainy season ends.

This is the mountain road we travel.

The seasons in the growing region are not distinct, but the rainy and dry seasons are very clear. After the last "earth-yellow rain" in October, there is about half a year of dry season, which is perfect for harvesting and drying coffee.

Coffee cherries undergoing natural sun drying.

April and May are the rainy season, with continuous rain every day. Coffee planted during this time will have half a year to establish good survival rates even with minimal care.

Newly planted coffee plants.

Forest-Grown Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee focuses on growing coffee within forests, a practice not common in China. Although this approach provides a better flavor development environment, the yield is inevitably not optimistic. With these tall trees serving as shade, they slow down the growth of coffee cherries, giving them more time to absorb more nutrients!

Yunnan Coffee Varieties

Among the ever-evolving "Yunnan small beans," FrontStreet Coffee shares that in the era before Catimor became mainstream, Yunnan had previously been cultivating the two veteran coffee varieties: Typica and Bourbon. Although they have excellent flavors, due to their weak disease resistance and variety degradation, Catimor became the main local planting variety since the 1980s. From the perspective of tree structure, Catimor's yield is three times higher than Typica, which is the fundamental reason why Typica coffee beans are priced higher.

Catimor.

For coffee lovers, it's not just about the artistic atmosphere of corner cafés—even coffee growing regions are full of poetry and distant horizons. Of course, undeniably, FrontStreet Coffee's plantation often has different beautiful scenery.

Coffee Farming Challenges

But in the growing region, these are not the focus. We need to understand the growth and maturity of coffee in different places, and also check for signs of borers, anthracnose, and sooty mold. Moving between different places, over these few days, my phone recorded 30,000-50,000 steps daily.

Most of the time is spent walking through winding, steep coffee forests~

The coffee harvesting process is similar. We all know that fully ripe coffee cherries exhibit richer flavors. Additionally, mixed varieties in the forest, the thickness of fresh cherries during drying, and timely turning during the drying process—although these matters are trivial, if you don't tell the coffee farmers handling them, they may not necessarily know that these details will affect the taste of coffee in the cup.

The Patience of Coffee Cultivation

From seed to maturity takes about 3-4 years. The mainstream varieties of specialty coffee in major growing regions are basically Typica or Bourbon, with not particularly large differences in varieties. Different places will have different regional flavors. This shows that terroir is also an important factor. It's unlikely to know whether good fruits will be produced a few years later—the answer needs to wait several years to be revealed.

Beyond maintaining a good growing environment, there are not many technical elements that can be artificially intervened in between. One can only wait patiently for it to grow slowly until it flowers and bears fruit. Even the use of fertilizers requires extreme caution. Why do many coffee drinkers emphasize Typica, Bourbon, or Geisha, while Catimor remains the mainstream in Yunnan growing regions?

You should know that changing varieties, improving altitude, and starting from scratch all require several years. Although coffee farmers are in the mountains, they may not have land that can be adjusted at will. After planting for several years and getting results, only then can the comparison and adjustment of processing methods begin, which takes another two years. This is why even knowing the answer, people won't easily start from scratch.

The Beauty of Time

A long time doesn't necessarily guarantee good results, but good results inevitably require a long time. This, perhaps, is also a kind of beauty.

END

FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473