Yunnan is a coffee-producing region that cannot be ignored on China's coffee map, and Mocha Peaberry is a particularly rare variety that captures the imagination. The author of this article uses over twenty years of pursuit as a thread, from international reports in the 1980s to personally setting foot on the land of southwestern Yunnan, recording several encounters and missed connections with Yunnan coffee. From disappointment in Lijiang Old Town to the astonishment of parchment beans in Xishuangbanna, and then to another search in the Nujiang Gorge, the author vividly depicts Mocha Peaberry's unique berry, chocolate, and faint smoky flavors. The article also mentions Front Street Coffee's ongoing attention to the Yunnan production area, providing coffee enthusiasts with a regional note that combines historical depth and sensory experience.
For professional barista exchanges, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account cafe_style)
In late October last year, I traveled to Yunnan for a 23-day trip, with more than half of it in southwestern Yunnan, walking along the China-Myanmar border. This area was originally the main coffee-growing region in Yunnan, so I took the rare opportunity to bring back some green coffee beans, hoping to taste again the good flavors I had experienced more than a decade ago.
By my reckoning, I learned that Yunnan produces coffee in the last century, in the 1980s when Taiwan and mainland China were still mutually closed off. At that time, news about the mainland often had to be learned through international media, and it was also then that the concept of specialty coffee was budding in the United States. People in the American coffee world began to turn their eyes toward China, believing that some areas in southern China might have the potential to produce high-quality coffee. At that time there was an article that introduced Yunnan coffee and specifically mentioned Yunnan's Mocha Peaberry.
The report aroused my interest. On one hand, Mocha Peaberry is a relatively rare bean variety, and before that I had pursued it for several years without success; on the other hand, even earlier in the 1970s, I had guessed that Yunnan might be the most ideal place in mainland China for growing coffee but found it hard to verify, and that report resolved part of my doubts.
As for Mocha Peaberry, I will discuss it another time when I have the chance; here I will mention just one point: southern mainland China has vast areas of land crossing the Coffee Belt [Note 1]. Why did I guess that the most suitable place for growing coffee was Yunnan? To be honest with readers, although I have one or two coffee trees, the purpose is only for interest and ornamental appreciation, and my actual growing experience is quite lacking. The basis for such a judgment comes entirely from what professional books say. Setting aside factors such as abundant water sources, intense sunlight, and moderate wind speeds, "the growing environment coffee trees love most is a mild climate and volcanic soil." In all of China, apart from Yunnan, I cannot think of a second place with both [Note 2]. Before reading the report, I had never been to Yunnan. My understanding of Yunnan, including geography and climate, came partly from textbooks, but mostly from the oral accounts of elders. Among my late father's colleagues, some had joined the Chinese Expeditionary Force to Burma during the War of Resistance and fought bloody battles with the Japanese around Myitkyina and Tengchong. When I was young, I once heard them talk with my father about the cruelty and hardship of combat, which left a deep impression, and the volcanic cluster near Tengchong was exactly a memory left by what I had heard.
After reading the report, nearly ten years passed before I had a possible encounter with Yunnan coffee. The reason I say "possible" is that whether what I encountered that time was really Yunnan coffee is actually hard to say.
It was the summer of a certain year in the 1990s. Several members of the May Fourth Coffee Club and I joined a trip to Yunnan, mainly to visit Lijiang and Shangri-La. One or two days before departure, a member, Mr. S, excitedly told me that he had just watched a television program introducing Lijiang Old Town, which specially reported on a coffee shop in the old town. The person responsible for preparing the coffee was a young beauty, and a graduate of Peking University. Since our itinerary originally included a full day of sightseeing in the old town, we immediately decided that on the day we toured Lijiang, we absolutely had to go to that coffee shop for a cup of coffee. Just think: being able to drink the long-heard-of but never-encountered Yunnan coffee and also admire a young woman of outstanding temperament—wouldn't that be delightful? Unfortunately, things in the world often do not go as one wishes.
On the first day of the trip, we first flew to Hong Kong, then transferred to a flight to Kunming. Using the layover time, I went to browse the airport bookstore and happened to see a copy of The Coffee Companion by the Englishman Jon Thorn. The book used quite a few pages to comment on the coffees of various coffee-producing countries, and among them there was also a page discussing China. I bought the book without hesitation. On the flight to Kunming, I read the book carefully, and my heart couldn't help but sink halfway, because when the book mentioned Chinese coffee beans, the very first sentence was, "Coffee professionals cannot be certain whether the coffee beans exported by China are truly produced in China." It turned out that although China produces coffee beans and some are exported abroad (Yunnan coffee already had some reputation internationally at that time), China's imports of coffee beans were even greater than its exports, and there had once been a bad record of passing off Tanzanian imported beans as Chinese-produced coffee beans and reselling them abroad to earn the price difference. In other words, even if you drink coffee in Yunnan, there is no guarantee that what you are drinking is Yunnan coffee.
In any case, we finally arrived at Lijiang Old Town and also found that coffee shop, but the "woman of outstanding temperament" was nowhere to be found, and the person at the bar had been replaced by a young man. As for the coffee we ordered, I can only say the flavor was ordinary, and whether the coffee beans were produced in Yunnan, the young man could not explain clearly either. The only thing praiseworthy was probably the leisurely mood of tasting coffee amid the murmuring water and swaying willow branches. So after returning to Taiwan, whenever someone asked, I could only say, "I drank coffee in Yunnan," and did not dare say, "I drank Yunnan coffee."
Several more years passed before I had a true encounter with Yunnan coffee, and the opportunity came from my wife's younger brother, my brother-in-law. At that time, because he had just gone through a turning point in work and family, and in order to empty himself and start anew, he traveled alone to mainland China, spending more than half a year going from north to south across half of China. Unexpectedly, marriage was destined, and in Xishuangbanna, the border town adjacent to Myanmar in Yunnan, he met his lifelong partner and got married locally. After marriage, restricted by the regulations of that time, he could not immediately bring his wife to Taiwan, so he had to temporarily be a frequent flyer, shuttling between the two places. Among my sister-in-law's relatives, some were engaged in coffee-related work, such as caring for rubber trees and coffee trees, or working at a contract coffee plantation for a large foreign company (I do not know whether it was Nestlé or Maxwell?), so every time my brother-in-law returned to Taiwan, he could bring back some truly Yunnan coffee beans produced in Xishuangbanna and give them to his coffee-loving brother-in-law, me.
The first two times he brought back green coffee beans that had already had their outer shell removed, and in size and shape they looked quite like the Bourbon variety. After sorting out defective beans, roasting, and carefully preparing them, I tasted them full of excitement, but was greatly disappointed, because compared with the various coffees I already had, they showed nothing special at all. At that time, there were already many articles in the foreign coffee world praising Yunnan coffee, and only later did I learn that what was praised was only Yunnan Mocha Peaberry. I had mistakenly thought that all Yunnan coffee should have a pretty good flavor, so after tasting it, of course I could not avoid disappointment. But the beans my brother-in-law brought back the third time completely reversed my impression.
What my brother-in-law brought back the third time were parchment beans that had not yet had the parchment [Note 3] removed. It was said that my sister-in-law's uncle taught at a mountain elementary school in Xishuangbanna, and these beans were a small batch he had picked from wild coffee trees in his spare time from teaching and then processed himself. Since mainland China is not at all the native home of coffee trees, my personal judgment is that the so-called wild coffee trees should have been plants left over after someone had once cultivated them and later abandoned them. In any case, the picker basically did not understand coffee very well, and the processing was not professional enough, so that the processed beans were not admirable just from their appearance: not only mottled in color, but also uneven in size, much uglier than the beans brought back the first two times. The first two times were already unsatisfactory; if this batch of beans was to be roasted, the husk would first have to be removed, and without a huller, anyone with experience knows how troublesome it is to remove parchment. So my first thought at the time was to throw the beans away. But my wife advised me not to let my brother-in-law's effort go to waste after he had brought the beans back from far away, and at the same time promised to share the hard labor of shelling them, which finally dispelled the thought of throwing the beans away.
Shelling was extremely laborious, but the shelled beans were dazzling: they were actually Mocha Peaberry! Before that, I had roasted the Yemeni Ismaili, also a Mocha Peaberry, several times, and had already revised the roasting profile quite well, which happened to be applicable to this batch of beans. So I chose an "auspicious day" (for coffee roasters, that means bright sunshine) and carefully roasted the beans according to the predetermined profile. Two days later, I selected my most skilled brewing equipment, a two-person siphon, and carefully prepared two cups of coffee to share with my wife.
As soon as the coffee entered my mouth, it was astonishing. Not to mention the rich mouthfeel, the beautiful acidity, and the aroma and finish combining berries and chocolate, the most special thing was that there was also a very light and wonderful smoky flavor. Most coffee-tasting experts know that aromas and flavors such as earth, rock, mushrooms, and firewood are usually classified as "defects" and are often reasons for deductions during cupping, but this is not an unchanging rule. Sometimes, a subtle special flavor instead increases a coffee's uniqueness and leaves a deep, unforgettable impression on the taster. For example, some Sidamo coffees carry a slight clean-rock smell, almost allowing one to imagine the landforms of Sidamo. Similarly, if I were to use words to describe how that cup of coffee made me feel at the time, I would probably say this:
It was like climbing a beautifully scenic hill, facing the open distance, breathing in clear transparent air, and suddenly discovering that the air carried a faint, barely-there, charming smoky scent like burning pine branches, while looking around, one could see no trace of smoke.
I feel very fortunate to have been lucky enough to have such a beautiful encounter with Yunnan coffee, but I also regret that it was the only one. My brother-in-law did not fail to return to Yunnan afterward. Before bringing my sister-in-law to settle in Taiwan, he made one or two more round trips between the two places. The last time, he brought back about half a kilogram of already shelled green beans. Those were a batch specially carefully selected by my sister-in-law's cousin who worked at the coffee plantation, hoping that I could appraise them and see whether the quality was good enough. The beans were relatively large in size and were not the Mocha Peaberry variety. Their appearance was very beautiful; in color, plumpness, and uniformity there was nothing to criticize. Only one point was depressing: after drinking it, apart from the word "ordinary," I could not think of any other adjective.
On my trip to Yunnan two months ago, in order to taste again the unforgettable flavor I had once experienced, I made every effort, and the tour leader and guide also did their utmost to help. Finally, at Liuku Town, the starting point of the Nujiang Grand Canyon, I bought locally produced coffee beans, and several coffee-loving travel companions, including me, divided up all twenty-plus kilograms. Unfortunately, the beans had clearly been mixed, with Mocha Peaberry making up only a small portion, and as for what other varieties there were, Mr. Li, who sold the beans, was vague. After returning home, I tried them, and my comment was "not bad," but there was still a distance from "outstanding." The coffee was mild and balanced, without unpleasant off-flavors, but it also could not stir a sense of amazement, especially since I could not find that evocative, faint smoky flavor. Obviously, this trip had not caught the beauty I had once encountered. The lyric "There is a beauty, whom once seen, I cannot forget." That feeling—I wonder how many more years it will linger in my heart?
[Note 1] The Coffee Belt refers to the region on Earth suitable for coffee tree growth, roughly between 22 degrees north latitude and 26 degrees south latitude. Because it encircles the Earth like a belt, it has this name. In southern China, provinces such as Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan Island all have a considerable portion falling within this range.
[Note 2] The Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau is less than half the altitude of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and its climate is famously mild. Also, in mainland China only two places have volcanic clusters: one is in the northeast, and the other is near Tengchong in Yunnan.
[Note 3] The endocarp of the coffee fruit is commonly called parchment. After drying, it becomes a hard shell covering the coffee bean inside, somewhat like a peanut shell covering the peanut kernel inside, except that each layer of shell (parchment) covers only one coffee bean. Coffee beans before this layer of shell is removed are called beans with parchment. By the way, the Turkish city near the Aegean Sea, Bergama (or written as Pergamun), was the place where parchment was produced in ancient Greek times. The English word for parchment, parchment, has its etymological origin in Pergamun.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
