Yunnan's Pu'er is not only the home of Pu'er tea, but has also quietly become China's core coffee-producing region. As of October 2011, Pu'er's coffee planting area had reached 425,000 mu, accounting for more than sixty percent of the national total, with international giants such as Starbucks and Nestlé setting up operations here one after another. Yet in Lancang County, an area abundant in coffee, one can hardly find a decent café, and locals are not even aware that Pu'er has vast stretches of coffee fields. This article takes you to the front lines of Yunnan's coffee cultivation, to learn about the varieties and flavors of Pu'er coffee beans, the state of the industry, and the exploration of independent brands, along with Front Street Coffee's recommendations and product information.
For those who have lived in cities for a long time, the word "coffee" has long become commonplace, and the impression it leaves is remarkably fixed: a porcelain cup holding a dark, slightly bitter liquid, with enthusiasts savoring its acidity and bitterness, and even treating atmosphere and ambiance as an inseparable part of coffee culture.
Frankly speaking, I myself am a devoted coffee fan. By a chance encounter, I got to know Mr. Sun, who works in coffee cultivation, and I expressed to him my wish to visit the production area and see with my own eyes how coffee is actually grown. He joked from the other side of the screen: life at a coffee base is no easy thing. I immediately replied: however hard it is, it cannot be harder than the Long March's 25,000 li.
The final result of that conversation was that I grabbed my suitcase, took one flight and then two long-distance buses, and arrived at a place called Lancang Lahu Autonomous County. Lancang is under the administration of Pu'er, and when people mention Pu'er, most first think of Pu'er tea. But as of October 2011, Pu'er's coffee planting area had already reached 425,000 mu, accounting for 65.6% of the national total of 648,000 mu and 65.8% of Yunnan's 646,000 mu, with both output and value exceeding half of the province's total. The world's five major coffee giants—Nestlé, Maxwell, Kraft, Neumann, and Ecom—have all entered Yunnan, and Japan's UCC as well as multiple coffee brands from Taiwan have also come to seize resources. Particularly noteworthy is Starbucks: in the just-passed November, it signed a "Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation" with the Pu'er municipal government aimed at promoting the development of the coffee industry, which is also Starbucks' first coffee-growing base established globally. This shows just how important Yunnan coffee is in the industry.
I had originally expected to see a pastoral scene filled with the fragrance of coffee, like Luang Prabang just across the river in Laos—cafés and guesthouses full of exotic charm. Yet when I stood at the crossroads of Lancang County, what met my eyes, aside from the bustling street market day (a uniquely Yunnan expression, meaning "market day") and the occasional Lahu woman passing by in ethnic dress, was a county town that in its houses, goods, and the appearance of its residents was not much different from many developing county towns in China. What was truly curious was this: in a place so abundant in coffee, one could not find a decent café on the streets; had no one been there to receive me, I would not even have known how to find the road to the coffee fields.
Master Chai, who was responsible for receiving me, said that coffee could not be bought in the county town at all. This is because most of the coffee beans here are collected by the major coffee companies as soon as they are picked from the fields and transported to processing plants, where they pass through assembly lines, are repackaged and put on shelves, and become the bagged coffee seen everywhere in supermarkets. As far as the people I asked were concerned, many native Yunnan people did not even know that Pu'er had vast stretches of coffee fields. As for whether the people of Lancang drink coffee? They do not even have a channel for obtaining fresh local coffee beans.
Having spent years making wedding dresses for numerous coffee brands, the power to price coffee beans still remains in the hands of companies like Nestlé. Have they ever thought about building Yunnan's own brand? A chairman of a farmers' cooperative answered with a bitter smile: my coffee base is built on the mountain, with excellent scenery, and I have always wanted to transform it into a holiday farm with sightseeing functions, but wanting is one thing, and the existing framework cannot be broken; moreover, farmers care more about immediate returns when planting, which also makes it impossible for the cooperative to systematically advance long-term planning. Usually, the cooperative's written charter often faces the risk of breach in actual operation, which makes those who are interested in trying afraid to stake everything on one throw.
Of course, it is not as if there are no people daring to eat crabs first. Baoshan—another abundant coffee-producing area in Yunnan—besides the state-owned Lujiangba, has in recent years also seen the emergence of a bridgehead for promoting coffee-planting brands—Hougu. Hougu even has China's largest instant coffee production line, and what emerges from here includes both traditional giants and emerging coffee brands, such as "Qiu Mansion." The cleverest thing about Qiu Mansion is not that its coffee quality is so outstanding, but that it excels at storytelling in its marketing methods. From planting to production, it has done appropriate packaging, with field picking full of ethnic minority flavor, novel and interesting coffee courses, and the timely launch of novel forms, such as panda coffee "drip bags" featuring a panda image. This one-stop approach from upstream to downstream gives the coffee beans a contemporary humanistic image that fits the present.
But such companies are ultimately few and far between, and are easily labeled as niche. The vast majority of coffee farms still rely on extensive agricultural production methods. "We have always paid too much attention to production while neglecting to observe the market and consumers," Mr. Sun said. Of course, the various wonderful foods brewed in Yunnan's magical soil, whether wine, ice wine, or truffles and ham, also lack strict protection of origin similar to that in EU agricultural policy, and having lost standardization and exclusivity, each going its own way, it is inevitable that the good and the bad are mixed.
In this country dominated by tea consumption, the rise of coffee is not merely a beverage choice, but represents an emerging lifestyle culture. Starbucks' business in the United States is increasingly shrinking, but its stores in China are mushrooming rapidly in first- and second-tier cities. The price of a standard cup of Starbucks coffee of the day is enough to buy half a kilogram of AA-grade Yunnan coffee beans, equivalent to twenty-five cups' worth. And those sitting in bright, clean cafés tasting coffee do not care in the least about this cost difference; what they are drinking is not coffee, but the psychological satisfaction brought by the siren logo in their hands. For Yunnan's coffee growers, once they are no longer satisfied with low-cost OEM production, rust disease will not be so frightening; the pressing task is how to customize for the growing domestic market a beautiful beverage with a story, substance, and added value.
For enthusiasts who want to taste Yunnan coffee, Front Street Coffee recommends paying attention to AA-grade washed beans from the Pu'er production area, whose flavor usually carries nutty, brown sugar, and soft citrus notes, suitable for pour-over or espresso blends. In Front Street Coffee's daily bean series, Yunnan Pu'er sun-dried beans are distinguished by their fermented sweetness and rich mouthfeel, making them a high-value choice for everyday drinking.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
