Looking for Yunnan small-grain coffee with the same quality as the world's top coffee.

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Written by Huang Xuezheng

In 2013, a group itinerary of "going straight to Lijiang Dining Table" with readers of "Journey to China" to Yunnan, saw the tiger jump, looked at the white head of Yulong, paced the bluestone of Dukzong in Sunlight City, and also showed the romance of Juanjuanfang in the ancient city. Along the way, I prepare tea in the evening and make coffee in the morning. Although I am in a foreign land, these two familiar tastes are accompanied by the two familiar tastes, making people feel at home and tranquil all the time. As a coffee drinker, I had done my homework before I went to Yunnan. I knew that apart from Pu'er tea, which has been rich for a century, there are also a small number of small grains of Yunnan coffee produced on a large scale in Asia. Now that I have arrived in Yunnan, I need to find out.

Comparable to the quality of the world's top coffee

Over the past decade, there has been a coffee growing frenzy in southwestern China, with the world's biggest companies Nestl é and Maxwell planting and buying Yunnan small-grain coffee on a large scale. The planting areas are concentrated in Baoshan, Dehong, Lincang, Chaer and Xishuangbanna in southwestern Yunnan. According to historical data, the origin of Yunnan coffee is complex, which can be divided into three stages: in the early 19th century, a coffee plant belonging to Arabica variety was introduced into southwest China with French missionaries in 1902, and successfully planted and produced. However, the real technological improvement was during the cooperation between China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s, when experts from the Soviet Union assisted agriculture, Typica and Bourbon, two Arabica species with higher market value, were tested and cultivated in Baoshan District of Yunnan Province, where the climate was similar to that of Central and South America.

Due to the ideal environment and technology, the highly acclaimed Yunnan coffee can be on a par with Colombian coffee, one of the largest output in the world, and then Sino-Russian cooperation deteriorated, coupled with changes in the social environment. Further quality improvement and mass production will be stopped later. Until Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up in 1979, through the 800000 educated youth's plan to go to the countryside and reclaim frontier agriculture, Yunnan's Typica beans won the first place in the international coffee competition. Unfortunately, at that time, the speed of reform in China was not in line with that of the world, and the domestic demand for coffee was almost zero, so the development of coffee in Yunnan once again came to an end.

In the 1990s, the international view and market demand gradually opened up, which prompted Baoshan to introduce two kinds of plants Timor and Caturra with better resistance to coffee rust, and successfully mixed them. As a result, Catimor coffee beans began to be mass produced.

Sip coffee in the mahjong room

There is a coffee-growing frenzy in southwestern China, but not many people actually drink coffee in the region.

After sharing for a week, I later looked for the legendary Yunnan small grain coffee in Lijiang, Shuhe, Dukezong market and various "boutique" cafes. Strictly speaking, "Yunnan small grains" is not difficult to find. Tourist souvenirs packed with double-layer aluminum foil chains can be seen everywhere in various scenic spots. As I have always adhered to my diet, I asked the shopkeeper to show me and smell it all the way. What I saw was nothing more than too hot and out of oil, otherwise the baking degree would be too high and would soon turn into charcoal. I feel very frustrated if I ask the shopkeeper to open a sample package but don't want to listen to it.

On the way back to Kunming, I found several coffee shops in Kunming by mobile phone. I thought it was only complete to have a taste of Yunnan Xiaogi in this capital of Yunnan. Walking along the road, a group of people passed the night market three blocks in Kunming and finally saw the coffee shop directed by Google. In the distance, I was delighted to see XX Coffee, a sign with scarlet letters on the white background on the simple wall in the distance. When I got closer, I saw a small door open, with a half-opened cross iron railing inside. The happy group of people walked to the door with their eyes wide open and could not close their mouths, because more than a dozen square tables in the column were busy fighting among the clouds and square bricks and green spaces. It turned out that the cafe on the map had long been converted into a mahjong parlor.

A group of people walked on in disappointment, trying to make a detour back to the road. Unexpectedly, when I was about to go back to the hotel, I saw someone drinking coffee in a mahjong parlor!

The ideal environment and technology can cultivate Yunnan coffee which is comparable to the world class.

Share so into the store, the store has two floors, the first floor is planned into a cafe, like the European style of the small balcony, there is a couple dating. I broke in and asked the girl at the bar to smell the Yunnan small grain of coffee for me. She generously and confidently took out a can of beans from the bottom of the cabinet. I looked at it, smelled it and basically smelled it right, and shouted for everyone to sit down with joy. After looking at the menu, I ordered two kinds of coffee, one from Colombia in South America and the other from Yunnan. For fear of making a mistake, I accompanied the waiter at the bar and watched her make coffee in a siphon pot. On the one hand, I watched her make coffee. On the other hand, when I saw something was wrong, I could step in and take over at any time to avoid the hope of being friendly and not easy to light.

The waiter was embarrassed by me, so I told her that if she couldn't cook it well, I would cook it for her, and she would take the money. After a lot of trouble, she was finally willing to agree when the landlady didn't come back.

That's it. I was scared to watch her make coffee. Two cups of coffee use almost five tablespoons of freshly ground coffee powder, the rising water and coffee have become thin mud, hard mixed three times, the whole bamboo stick is inserted in the mud stalk, standing upright and coffee "boiled" together! The waitress looked at the timer with sharp eyes, suddenly turned on the faucet to one side, took the siphon pot off the fire, put it under the faucet, and confidently flushed water from the upper pot to the lower pot. Soon there was a cup of muddy "coffee" in front of me.

In Yunnan, it tastes so bad that it tastes like "Yunnan small grains".

Needless to say, I certainly took over the follow-up coffee, and the waitress was surprised to make four cups of glossy, clear, mellow coffee with only five spoonfuls of coffee.

To tell you the truth, the process of looking for Yunnan Xiaogi is not smooth. The coffee I drank in the mahjong parlor in Houjie City that night was not ideal, but after all, it was a real Yunnan Little Grain Coffee with a taste of Arabica beans. Rich and delicate sour, a little hidden bitter rhyme in the back of the tongue. But strictly speaking, its personality is not obvious. I do not know whether it is because of the roasting degree of coffee beans or the mixing of unknown plants, which always makes me feel that this coffee is not a clear and confident coffee bean. Later, I checked the data to understand that Yunnan small grain coffee is actually a marketing term, does not represent a specific variety of coffee head, to be more accurate, it is only "coffee produced in Yunnan".

It turns out that in order to avoid a large concentration of bean sources in South America, Nestl é chose Pu'er and Simao, which are located on the golden belt of coffee beans in the world and located in the subtropical plateau, to start a coffee trial in 1988, and in 1992, an experimental demonstration farm covering an area of 64 hectares was established in Xishuangbanna, and more than 30 coffee trees were planted for many years. And then select 6 varieties which are most suitable for planting in Yunnan to promote. Over the past 20 years, more than 2500 farmers have grown coffee, and Nestl é sends professional teams every year to assist in planting technology and coffee education. The coffee industry finally realized the charm of Yunnan coffee for the first time in 2003, and the term "Yunnan small-grain coffee" appeared for the first time in the futures exchange of the United States.

Because coffee is much more profitable than crops such as sugar, about 70 per cent of Yunnan coffee is exported and only 30 per cent is used in China; of which, in 2013, Nestl é bought more than 11500 tonnes of coffee and sold it on the New York Coffee Futures Market.

On my way back to the hotel that night, I thought to myself that this opportunity to kiss Fangze seemed to be looking for somewhere else in China.