How did Yunnan coffee farming move from Typica to Catimor?

Coffee has been grown in Yunnan for more than a century, and the first variety planted was Typica, not the Catimor that dominates today. A French Catholic missionary planted Typica trees beside a church in Zhukula Village, in the Dali area, in 1904. Catimor now accounts for about 99 percent of Yunnan's output, which is why the region's coffee tends to be judged on processing rather than variety.

Yunnan cultivation unfolded in three waves. The first came in the 1960s, when the agricultural reclamation system planted coffee on state farms across Baoshan, Dehong, Ruili, Wenshan and nearby districts to repay loans to the Soviet Union, with the state foreign trade department buying the crop. Locally propagated Typica was used. Yunnan green beans have since placed well in competitions, and one effort has spent eight years rebuilding Typica plantings.

Yunnan coffee has frequently won awards in green bean competitions in recent years, gradually becoming a coffee-producing origin that cannot be ignored in the specialty coffee market. This article traces the historical context of Yunnan coffee, from the introduction of Typica a century ago and the succession of three waves of cultivation, to the situation where Catimor now accounts for 99% of production. It analyzes why Yunnan coffee places more emphasis on processing methods rather than varieties, and records the complete story of Front Street Coffee's choice to start from scratch growing Typica and its eight-year exploration of the path toward specialty coffee.

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In recent years, green coffee beans from the Yunnan origin have continuously achieved impressive results in competitions both domestically and internationally, gradually entering the public eye. The potential shown by Yunnan arabica coffee is striking, like a dark horse quietly rising, steadily entering the specialty coffee market. Today, let's talk about the journey Yunnan coffee has taken over these years.

The Cultivation History of Yunnan Coffee

Coffee has been cultivated in Yunnan for over a century. The first to take root in this land was not the Catimor seen everywhere today, but Typica. This variety went through two important stages of development in Yunnan. In 1904, French Catholic missionary Tian Deneng entered the Dali area of Yunnan via Vietnam to spread Christianity. While building a church in Zhukula Village, he also planted a batch of Typica coffee trees beside the church. Thereafter, Yunnan coffee cultivation experienced three successive waves of development. Typica is what we commonly call the Arabica small-bean variety, and it is also the earliest origin of Yunnan arabica coffee.

The first wave of development occurred in the 1960s. At that time, in order to repay loans to the Soviet Union, the Yunnan agricultural reclamation system began cultivating coffee, with products purchased uniformly by the state foreign trade department. The cultivation areas were 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 mutations, and the coffee cultivation area of the entire agricultural reclamation system once reached 50,000 mu. Later, as the loan repayment task ended, the foreign trade department no longer actively purchased, and coupled with the spread of rust infection causing large-scale death, massive felling was carried out to prevent the disease from spreading. The cultivation area once shrank to less than 3,000 mu.

The second wave of development began in the 1980s after the reform and opening up. In 1988, Nestlé decided to support the Yunnan coffee industry and introduced Catimor to Yunnan for large-scale cultivation. It was this development that enabled Catimor to replace the ancient Typica and become the dominant variety of Yunnan coffee, accounting for 99% of Yunnan coffee production. Catimor is a hybrid variety, and it can also be classified under the broad Arabica category.

The third wave of development came after 2000. As China's economy took off, the concept of specialty coffee was introduced into the country, and Yunnan coffee's variety selection and cultivation also began to move toward a scientific approach. At present, the specialty coffee process in Yunnan is still being continuously advanced.

Why Has Yunnan Coffee in Recent Years Been Emphasizing Processing Methods?

Although Yunnan is located within the latitude belt suitable for coffee cultivation, most areas have an altitude of only around 1,000 meters, just barely reaching the qualifying line for quality Arabica cultivation. Not the entire region is suitable for coffee growing; only southern areas such as Baoshan, Lincang, Simao, and Dehong have the conditions for cultivation. With the rise of the specialty coffee trend, Yunnan as a representative origin naturally does not want to be absent. But you will notice a phenomenon: Yunnan coffee seems to focus more on processing methods rather than varieties. In contrast, when discussing other origins, we usually follow the order of origin, variety, and then processing method.

When the concept of specialty coffee was proposed, China did not attach importance to the development of the coffee industry. By the 1980s, driven by Nestlé, Yunnan began large-scale cultivation of Catimor, which has higher yield and stronger disease resistance. Nestlé purchased coffee from farmers at reasonable prices for use as raw material for instant coffee. By the time economically developed regions introduced the concept of specialty coffee, Yunnan still had a cultivation approach dominated by farmers with yield as the primary goal, and the quality of high-yield coffee is often less than satisfactory.

Today Yunnan already has vast tracts of Catimor coffee trees, and we also know that these raw coffee materials originally supplied to Nestlé cannot leap into specialty coffee overnight. Therefore, the specialization of Yunnan coffee has split into two paths: one is to use existing beans, imitating Colombia, and rely on new processing methods to change the flavor, making them distinctive through processing. Here an interesting phenomenon appears—some baristas seem secretive when talking about special processing methods, but after a while, when recommending Yunnan coffee, most of them will recommend Yunnan beans with special processing; the other path is to start over, choose suitable plots, plant excellent varieties, adopt scientific management, and gradually cultivate high-quality Yunnan coffee.

In 2011, Yunnan coffee once saw a historic high price. Even though international coffee futures repeatedly hit new highs in 2022, they still did not reach the price height of that year. That year many Yunnan coffee farmers replanted coffee, but prices soon fell into a trough again—this is the law of agriculture.

Therefore, even with the rise of specialty coffee, they are unwilling to spend 5 years replacing the existing Catimor variety. Those still growing coffee would rather use existing beans for customized processing—if you want natural, they give you natural; if you want anaerobic, they give you anaerobic. It takes only about a month. In contrast, the traditional route from variety and washing method to determining flavor takes at least 5 years. Moreover, at the time of planting, who can guarantee that flowering and fruiting 5 years later will definitely bring good results?

Faced with these two paths, Front Street chose the long latter one.

Front Street Coffee's Yunnan Cultivation Exploration Journey

Many people's impression of Front Street Coffee is "a cozy little shop that roasts its own beans." This year is Front Street Coffee's eleventh year, and what many people do not know is that Front Street's coffee cultivation actually began half a year earlier than its roasting. Front Street Coffee's predecessor was called "Dazhen Coffee," a name originating from our desire in 2013 to grow coffee in a place in Guangdong called Dazhen. When we raised seedlings from Catimor and they grew to 20 centimeters, more than half a year had passed, and only then did we truly understand: the relationship among variety, altitude, and processing method, as well as their order.

Choose the right variety, plant it at the appropriate altitude, and after maturation experiment to find a processing method that can express its distinctive flavor—this is the only logical relationship by which Front Street believes specialty coffee can present clear regional flavors.

So we gave up the plan to grow coffee in Guangdong. Because the place where we first roasted coffee was opened on Bao'an Front Street, we changed the name from "Dazhen Coffee" to "Front Street Coffee." At Front Street, while roasting coffee, we continued moving forward with the idea of specialty coffee cultivation. We successively visited the Tropical Crops Research Institute (Tropical Agriculture Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture Coffee Germplasm Bank), which has in-depth research on coffee cultivation, and a few coffee farmers growing specialty coffee. We clarified the reasons why Yunnan does not grow mainstream specialty varieties such as Typica and Bourbon, and by chance also found land suitable for cultivation in Yunnan's main coffee-producing areas.

Arabica coffee beans have requirements for cultivation altitude, needing to be above 1,000 meters. For better flavor, the altitude needs to be even higher. But the altitude of Yunnan's mountain ranges generally only just reaches the qualifying line, which is Yunnan coffee's disadvantage. To compensate for the shortcoming in altitude, on the premise of good varieties, more excellent agronomic management must be invested.

Front Street did not buy an existing Catimor estate and directly harvest and process it. Instead, it bought a mountain area suitable for coffee cultivation and started from the variety. Even if the land is good, if when talking about most specialty coffee we say the foundation is origin, variety, altitude, and processing method, but when doing Yunnan we ignore these points, it is actually very difficult to achieve specialty flavor. Choosing the path of starting cultivation from zero was truly a last resort. When we planted, we did not know whether there would be good results years later, but at least we did all the foundational points of specialty coffee—after all, history's choice is Arabica's Typica, Bourbon, and Geisha.

The main Yunnan variety Front Street cultivates is Typica, an Arabica variety with excellent flavor, used to record this long experiment in Yunnan specialty coffee. At the same time, Typica has very low yield, only one-third that of Catimor, so its price is higher. In addition, Typica and Bourbon are extremely susceptible to rust, which is one of the biggest reasons farmers are unwilling to grow what they call the "old variety" Typica.

Yunnan has no four seasons, only a dry season and a rainy season. Most coffee-producing areas are similar, which is also the fundamental reason some producing areas adopt the natural method. Entering June, the rainy season begins in the producing areas, and for the next three to four months it will rain, which is the most favorable period for growing coffee. Only when seedlings are planted at this time, after being nourished by rain for several months, can they develop a well-developed root system and survive the first dry season lasting half a year.

Growing coffee from scratch has extremely high time costs. Coffee takes three to four years from seedling to first fruiting. Then experimenting with suitable processing methods and finally reproducing them takes at least five years to obtain the first batch of coffee. No one guarantees that one can produce excellent specialty coffee on the first try, and Front Street firmly believes there is no such easy thing in the world. After multiple rounds of variety selection and breeding, and refinement processing experiments after fruiting, several more years passed.

After 7 years, Front Street finally produced a presentable result: this batch of only 200 kilograms of Typica coffee beans, processed naturally. To record the journey of these years, it was named "Front Street 2013" and sold in the shop. And for this cup of coffee, we spent 8 years.

So how does this fully self-produced batch of Front Street coffee beans taste?

Filter cup: V60

Water temperature: 88℃

Dose: 15 grams

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Grind size: fine granulated sugar coarseness (80% passing through Chinese standard No. 20 sieve)

Front Street brewing method: Pulse pouring extraction. Use 30 grams of water for a 30-second bloom, pour in a small stream in circles until 124 grams, then pause. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, continue pouring until 227 grams and stop. When the water level drops and is about to expose the coffee bed, remove the filter cup. (Start timing from the beginning of the bloom.) Extraction time is 2 minutes.

Taste description: Front Street 2013 Yunnan natural Typica has nutty notes. The body is more solid than Front Street washed Yunnan coffee, the acidity is slightly lower than washed Typica, but the sweetness is a bit higher and the balance is better, with berry-like acidity, interspersed with brown sugar, and a slight tea-like sensation.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.