Yunnan: The Coffee I Wasn't Looking For
I discovered Yunnan coffee by accident.
It was my first trip to the region, and I was walking through the streets of Dali when I noticed something I wasn't expecting to see: coffee.
I knew Yunnan for tea. Pu-erh, in particular.
It was one of those small travel discoveries that stays somewhere in the back of your mind.
I started looking into it.
The following year, I returned to Yunnan in spring. Not because of coffee, actually. I had simply fallen in love with the province during my first visit and felt I had barely scratched the surface.
This time, among other places, I travelled to Pu'er.
I had arranged to visit some tea plantations with a girl I had met from Xi'an. She was on her way to visit an animal ecopark, so we decided to combine both plans.
And then, as often happens when travelling, the itinerary took an unexpected turn.
We bumped into a Chinese couple who were doing a road trip through Yunnan. They invited us to visit a coffee shop located inside a coffee plantation.
Of course, I said yes.
I had never really associated the province with coffee, so seeing the plantation and tasting local beans immediately caught my attention.
The coffee was from DaKaiHe, a local producer, and the one we tasted was called Olive Tree. It was a washed Catimor, medium roasted, with notes of Indian gooseberry, dark chocolate and even raw Pu-erh tea.
I had gone to Pu'er for tea.
Coffee had found me again.
I was beginning to realise that in Yunnan, the two were impossible to separate.
DaKai He Coffee Yunnan DaKai He Coffee Yunnan DaKai He Coffee Yunnan Red Panda, Pu'er eco park Tea plantation Expo Pu'er yunnan china DaKai He Coffee Yunnan
By autumn, my curiosity had turned into something more serious.
Together with my business partner and our local suppliers, we decided to organise an exploratory trip to understand more about Yunnan's tea and coffee landscapes.
We met in Dali and set off by car towards Baoshan.
The drive itself was spectacular: winding roads climbing through mountains, valleys disappearing into the distance and landscapes that seemed to change every few kilometres.
We didn't have much time, so we headed straight to Xinzhai Coffee Valley.
One of the places we wanted to visit was a café inside a beautiful boutique hotel, high up in the mountains.
Our driver was local and knew the roads perfectly well.
I did not.
As we climbed higher and higher on increasingly narrow mountain roads, I began to wonder whether my enthusiasm for coffee had perhaps gone too far.
I was genuinely scared.
Then we arrived.
The view from the top made every minute of my anxiety completely worthwhile.
Xinzhai Valley, Baoshan yunnan yunnan coffee Baoshan yunnan coffee plantation Baoshan yunnan arabica coffee Baoshan yunnan Coffee Shop Baoshan Yunnan Coffee Shop Baoshan Yunnan
And then we went back down to visit some factories and other cafés.
At Old Foundation Manor, we tasted several Yunnan coffees.
One of them was a washed Geisha with notes of gardenia, Buddha's hand, yellow apple and green tea.
Another was a Kona Peaberry, floral and remarkably sweet, with delicate fruity acidity and a nutty finish.
We also tried a washed Kona from Baoshan, grown at around 1,400 metres, with notes of nuts, brown sugar, berries, tea and cocoa.
Then came a natural-processed Catimor from Bear Specialty, with notes of red wine, pineapple and jackfruit.
And there was Pink Bourbon, high-mountain coffee and several other beans whose names and flavour profiles I was beginning to collect almost as quickly as I was collecting tea names.
After a few days of cafés, roasteries and coffee farms, we continued towards Fengqing.
And once again, tea took over.
Fengqing is one of the places associated with Dian Hong, Yunnan's famous black tea.
From Fengqing we travelled to Lincang and then to Bingdao, where some of the region's ancient tea trees can be found.
Temple, Lincang Yunnan Camellia Sinensis Fengqing, Yunnan Da Hong, Fengqing, Yunnan Tea factory Fengqing, Yunnan Fengqing, Yunnan
When we arrived in Bingdao, we visited the home of a local tea producer.
As usual, we sat down to drink tea and talk, with our local suppliers translating the conversation for us.
After a while, quite unexpectedly, everyone stood up and told us to get in the car.
We were going to see the tea trees.
We drove up into the mountains to visit the plantations, including trees that had been planted by his father.
It was a simple gesture, but somehow it made the tea feel different. These weren't just ancient trees or famous tea gardens. They were part of someone's family history.
But the visit didn't end there.
On the way back, our host told us we were going somewhere else.
The sun was already getting close to the horizon, and our driver began speeding through the mountain roads.
I don't particularly enjoy driving fast, and as the roads became narrower and the light began to disappear, I started getting a little nervous.
Our host, however, seemed completely relaxed.
He knew these mountains.
After about an hour and a half of driving at what felt to me like alarming speed through the mountains, we arrived just as the last light of the day was fading.
Our host and his girlfriend proudly took us to see the ancient tea trees that had been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The pride in his eyes as he talked about those trees was impossible to miss.
We walked among them almost in the dark before finally heading back to the village.
And then, as if the day hadn't already been generous enough, he invited us to dinner.
That kind of hospitality towards complete strangers is something I have experienced in Uruguay too. My parents are exactly like that: if someone arrives at their home, they are immediately welcomed, fed and treated as if they belonged there.
But experiencing the same generosity so far away from home still surprised me.
Once again, I was reminded that hospitality is universal.
Sometimes, you just need to travel far enough to recognise it.
Ancient Trees, Bingdao, Yunnan 
Tea master, Bingdao, Yunnan Tea house, Bingdao, Yunnan Ancient Tea Trees, Bingdao, Yunnan Ancient Tea Trees, Bingdao, Yunnan Ancient Tea Trees, Bingdao, Yunnan
We continued to Weishan before completing the loop back to Dali.
By then, I had started to understand something about Yunnan.
This is not a province that can be reduced to one product, one landscape or one culture.
It is enormous and extraordinarily diverse.
From Dali, we took a train to Pu'er and then switched back to a car to explore the surrounding areas properly.
We visited River Valley, where we were surprised by an impressive café hidden among the landscape.
Then we headed into the mountains of Jingmai, where we discovered Bean Great, a local coffee brand that has become a strong presence in the area.
The journey continued through Menghai, the Nannuo Mountains and eventually Xishuangbanna.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking about Yunnan coffee as a curiosity.
It had become a destination in itself.
There is something particularly fascinating about discovering a coffee-producing region that is still developing its own identity.
Yunnan's coffee story is relatively young compared with the centuries-old traditions of coffee-growing countries elsewhere in the world. Yet the combination of altitude, mountains, climate, biodiversity and increasingly sophisticated processing methods is producing coffees that are becoming impossible to ignore.
And perhaps that is what makes travelling here so interesting.
You are not simply discovering a finished product.
You are watching a coffee culture being shaped.
At the same time, Yunnan remains one of China's great tea regions.
Tea and coffee coexist here in a way that feels almost inevitable once you see the landscape. Mountains, forests, mist, small farms and communities have created the conditions for both.
But Yunnan is much more than tea and coffee.
The province is home to 26 officially recognised ethnic groups, each with its own traditions, food, architecture, languages and ways of life.
Travelling through Yunnan means constantly moving between different cultural worlds without ever really leaving the same province.
By the end of our journey, we had consumed what could reasonably be described as an overdose of tea and coffee.
And yet, somehow, I still wanted more.
More cups.
More mountains.
More farms.
More conversations with producers.
More stories behind the beans and leaves.
That is probably the best thing about discovering a destination through its food and drinks: eventually, the cup becomes an excuse to understand the place behind it.
I went to Yunnan looking for tea.
Coffee kept getting in the way.
I'm very glad it did.
Comments