Alicia Feng has been serving Chinese specialty coffee at Calere, her shop on Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, since it opened in 2019. The first question new customers usually ask is, “There’s coffee from China?” But her regulars – most of whom once asked that question – now ask to try new crops as soon as they arrive.

Feng is from Hainan, a tropical island province that grows robusta, a coffee species usually considered lower quality than arabica, the kind virtually every independent cafe in Australia serves. “On our island, people drink very dark and mostly instant coffee with a lot of sugar. It always appears more as a convenient or functional drink,” she says.

In 2018, while working at St Ali’s roastery, she was introduced to specialty coffee from Yunnan by the team at Four Kilo Fish in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. The cafe was, Feng says, the first to bring Chinese coffee to Melbourne.

The coffee coming out of Yunnan, a southern province bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, was “so different” from what she previously knew in China. “The quality improved so much,” she says. “There was so much more fruit, the sweetness was so much bigger. It was not so rubbery and not earthy.” While this particular batch still didn’t rival specialty-grade beans from prestigious coffee-growing nations like Ethiopia, Brazil and Panama, she knew it was a start.

French missionary Alfred Liétard is said to have planted Yunnan’s (and China’s) first coffee trees in 1904. The province now grows as much as 99 per cent of all coffee in China, according to the Coffee Association of Yunnan, most of it processed using the washed technique for a clean, fresh finish. It helps that farms in mountainous Yunnan are 1–2000 metres above sea level, an important factor in developing a pleasing level of acidity.

“Yunnan has a really good climate. It grows one of the most expensive teas in the world,” Feng says. “I felt like it just needed time and care, and you need more people to go into the industry. It had such big potential.”

Rummy Keshet of Perth’s Offshoot Coffee affectionately calls Feng the “Coffee Princess of China” for giving him and others in Australia access to Chinese beans via Singularity Coffee, the importing company she runs with Reeve Zhu.

Keshet first tried Chinese coffee in 2011 while working as a barista in London. “My friend knew people in China who knew people, who knew people, who knew people, and managed to get a sample,” he tells Broadsheet. Keshet wasn’t roasting at the time so sent the green beans to a reputable roaster.

“After they roasted it and sampled it, they called me back and said, ‘Don’t ever bring me this shit ever again.’” The coffee was mouldy, likely due to poor storage and a lack of quality control.

He travelled to China a year after that and tried “decent [Yunnan] coffee”. He later moved to Australia and, in 2016, came across Yunnan Coffee Traders at an industry event. He says the Yunnan-based exporter was the first company to start championing high-quality coffee from the region.

Keshet now thinks Chinese coffee is up there with the best in the world. In the industry especially, Panama is renowned for its production of geisha, arguably the world’s most highly prized coffee variety. “No one would believe me, but I did try a geisha from Yunnan this year that was on the level of Panama,” he says.

Sean Do began serving Yunnan coffee at Adelaide roastery and cafe Coffee in Common in November. The Blue Iris blend he buys from Yunnan-based Project One Light coffee has become a bestseller, largely thanks to its versatility for all brew methods and its fruity, approachable profile. “It’s such an easy coffee to drink,” he says.

Yi Chen, who owns Four Kilo Fish with Sijin Yu, grew up in Yunnan but didn’t realise coffee beans grew there until she moved to Melbourne and developed an appreciation for the drink. She says it was initially hard to convince other Melbourne roasters to experiment with Yunnan beans. “Most of the feedback we received was along the lines of, ‘The flavour isn’t very appealing’ or ‘Not interesting enough’. An even bigger concern for many was whether the market would accept coffee from China at all,” she says.

Chen, Feng and Keshet’s growing interest in Chinese coffee came at a time when China itself really began to appreciate it. Nestle first sold instant coffee in China in 1988, while Starbucks entered mainland China in 1999 and now has nearly 7000 stores in the country. But the specialty coffee scene has boomed over the past 10 years, with local chains such as Luckin Coffee, Seesaw Coffee and Manner Coffee helping Shanghai become the city with the most coffee shops in the world in 2021.

Chen says the biggest change she’s noticed since 2018 is a shift in Chinese farmers’ confidence. “When we first entered the industry, many farmers were actually cutting down their coffee trees, believing that growing coffee wasn’t profitable. Also back then, they cultivated coffee but didn’t even drink coffee themselves. But now, coffee plantations are expanding every year, farming equipment has been upgraded for greater efficiency and, most importantly, we see more smiles on people’s faces.” (Labour practices at certain Yunnan farms supplying Nestle and Starbucks have been scrutinised, however.)

One practice that’s become popular is co-fermenting, where a coffee is processed with fruits, herbs and/or spices. While Australian roasters have been toying with co-fermentation for years, the practice remains contentious in the industry. Purists argue it detracts from coffee’s terroir, or even that it’s a crutch to mask inferior coffee. Others see co-fermenting as an innovative way to open up a whole new world of flavours and draw in new customers. In the case of Yunnan co-ferments, the resulting brews can taste like peach oolong tea, blackberries and even lollies.

“It’s so new and so wild, so people also question it,” Feng says. “A lot of people are very critical about it. They wonder, ‘Is it real?’, or ‘Why does it taste like that?’”

“It’s polarising – you either love them or hate them,” says Keshet. “Fermented coffees are not what people think coffee should taste like.”

Feng thinks her job is to give these beans a platform, rather than judge whether they’re valid or not. But she also thinks these “wild” coffee beans have helped increase the popularity of Chinese coffee in Melbourne. In 2023, she created Big White Rabbit, a blend that uses vanilla-tasting yeast-fermented beans, and tastes like White Rabbit lollies, a childhood favourite for many Chinese people.

Yunnan coffee remains rare in Australia, and these co-ferments even rarer. Chen doubts either style will ever become mainstream in Australia because the province doesn’t produce a high volume relative to other regions, and because China’s domestic demand is already so strong. But, she says, “From a flavour perspective, it’s definitely something that leaves a lasting impression.”

Adelaide

Coffee in Common, Hindmarsh

Yuna Restaurant and Cafe, Mile End

Whyld Coffee, Prospect

Brisbane

Cubic, Brisbane

Coffee Anthology, Brisbane

The Hideout Specialty Coffee, Brisbane

Seeds and Soul, Spring Hill

General Coffee, Fortitude Valley

Masters St Coffee, Newstead

Fables, Woolloongabba

Black Mass Roasters (online orders only)

Melbourne

Calere, Fitzroy

City Saints, Collingwood

Chiaki, Collingwood

Four Kilo Fish, Hawthorn

Manta Ray Coffee Roasters, Nunawading

Perth

Laika Coffee, Lathlain

Offshoot Coffee, Perth

Sydney

Knight’s Coffee & Tea Co, Haymarket

Morning Owl, Auburn

Only Coffee Project, Crows Nest

Showbox Coffee, Manly