It is an annual tradition to organise a family day outing during November. On such a day, all staff and their families get together for a day of fun, games and good food. This year the setting was a restaurant not far out of town, though in a very quiet environment. Surrounded by tea hills, you could just get a glimpse of the city in the far distance. An ideal place for the children to run around and have fun, while the others chatted away the afternoon with a nibble and a drink.
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Coffee was introduced in mainland China in the early 20th century, more specifically in Yunnan and Hainan. A French missionary brought the first coffee seedlings to Binchuan county in Yunnan and it is said that a few of those first trees still exist today. By 1965 the Chinese government had 4000 hectares planted with coffee, though further development was hampered by restrictive economical conditions, and ten years later less than 70% was still under coffee cultivation. It took over a decade for a revival of coffee cultivation, aided by efforts from the Chinese and Yunnan Provincial Government, UNDP and Nestle. In the mid 1990s the acreage had again reached 4000 hectares, to double within the next 3 years. Today coffee plantations take up over 30,000 hectares and this number is likely to keep increasing for some time to come. But what makes Yunnan fit to grow coffee? To start, part of the province is located between the Tropic of Cancer and that of Capricorn, the zone within which conditions can be suitable to grow coffee. What's more, Yunnan is a mountainous zone, with the northern mountains keeping the wintery cold out, the lower southern ones allowing passage of warm, moist air. This combined with the river valleys in the east and west, which provide plenty of rainfall, and a large enough temperature variation between day and night, make it possible to grow a good quality crop in this region. And Yunnan coffee, when properly grown and processed, is a good quality coffee, medium-bodied with a light acidity. The growing export figures for this crop show that people all over the world are starting to discover this.
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AuthorI wouldn't be surprised to find out I was born with a passion for coffee. For the life of me, I can't remember not loving coffee. And by that, I don't just mean drinking it, but everything involved from its cultivation over the processing to the final product that is my loyal companion throughout the day. Archives
February 2014
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