Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2017

Serving People Serving Coffee Since 2005

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V I E T N A M A late-night descent into Tan San Nhat International Airport isn't unlike landing at Los Angeles International Airport. Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon) and its 8.5 million residents sprawl horizontally for miles. I've tacked back and forth between the U.S. and Vietnam for a decade now, but I always enjoy the bird's-eye view of streets swollen with headlights—motorbikes in this instance—and traffi c jammed with people going about their 11 p.m. business. As usual, my standard taxi ride from the airport to my regular hotel in the center of Saigon revealed a familiar, vibrant nightlife packed with street-side seafood stalls, local beer, and steaming cauldrons of soup and rice porridge. On this particular route, I was lucky enough to drive near the Notre Dame Cathedral with its convergence of high-school-age kids hanging out in the park drinking coffee, soda, and energy drinks on cardboard mats. When I'm in Vietnam, it's almost always for coffee-related reasons, so it's hard for me to ignore the hundreds of signs emblazoned with the word cˆ ph• whenever I move about the city. No matter how much I understand about Vietnamese coffee, I still wonder how so many cafés can exist in such close proximity. What I've been wondering about most recently is the state of Viet- namese specialty coffee, urban café culture, and what it might look like to see Vietnamese drinking pourovers produced in their own highland region. Vietnam certainly has a nascent specialty-coffee scene, but I have the sense that this is just the start of a long journey for the en- thusiastic producers, roasters, baristas, and consumers I've met over the past few years. My latest trip in December 2016 was more social than research oriented, and I had the opportunity to sit down with many of the leading fi gures in this country's specialty-coffee move- ment and think carefully about the future of coffee culture in Vietnam. T W O I N D U S T R I E S Despite the country's ranking as the second-largest coffee producer in the world, Vietnam probably isn't the fi rst or most reputable coffee origin that comes to mind. Nor is it an origin you're likely to see on the pourover menu of many cafés outside of Vietnam. There are plenty of reasons for this—good, bad, but mostly complicated. Over the past several years, a series of trips to the south-central highlands region and a long-standing research relationship with the country have convinced me that it's time to have a larger conversation about Vietnam's coffee potential. To do this without forgetting that a majority (well over 90 percent) of the coffee producers in Vietnam are growing commodity coffee relegated to instant soluble crystals is a surprisingly diffi cult task unless you have the opportunity to travel to Buon Ma Thuot. This scorching city of roughly 1 million residents is undoubtedly the coffee capital of Vietnam. It sits at relatively low ele- vation (600 masl) in Dak Lak Province, where nearly all of Vietnam's Robusta originates. It's the coffee capital for a reason. Buon Ma Thuot is the hub of the Vietnamese coffee boom and home to coffee showrooms at every cor- ner, a majority of the 27 million bags produced, the Vietnamese Coffee Festival, and nearly a million people who depend on instant-coffee drinkers for their well-being. This is not lost on many of the Arabica producers in neighboring Lam Dong Province. In general, there is a belief that improving the quality of specialty coffee in Vietnam and Opposite page: Khanh of La Viet Coff ee (top) and Thi of The Married Beans (bo om) perfect their pourover game. This page: Land for sale amid the Langbiang, Lac Duong District Arabica producers. 41 www.baristamagazine.com

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