Sherry Gao is pouring coffee made from single-origin beans, hoping that her Mandarin Coffee Stand in the city of Pasadenawill, California introduces you to your new favorite coffee and turns your preconceptions about Chinese coffee beans upside down.
Much of the Western world imports its coffee from Africa and South America. But Gao hopes that throwing light on Yunnan-sourced coffee could expose customers to the coffee-producing region and help to break down prejudice against the beans, which for decades, until only a few years ago, were primarily used for instant products.
"We wanted to highlight Chinese coffee because a lot of people never had Chinese coffee before," Gao said. "Some have the mindset that it's bad or it's cheap, but that's not the case anymore. It's been changing so much over the last decade."
Recent experimentation with processing, such as the addition of fruit or sugarcane molasses during the production, is leading Yunnan's coffee to more flavorful results. "Every time a new product comes in, it tastes better than the last one," Gao said.
Farmers in China have grown tea for more than 3,000 years, but coffee has been grown there for only about a century in small quantities, with an uptick in the 1980s with government involvement. And the turn of the century and the 2010s saw a sharp growth with international corporations investing in the region's crops, initially for use in instant coffee.
But in the last 10 to 15 years, tastes and demand for specialty and high-grade coffees emerged, especially from local growers and shops. The domestic demand for China-grown coffee has risen so dramatically that Gao says it's now much more expensive.
To further connect with the community, Gao hopes to one day host classes for interactive how-to events. After all, she says, the Yunnan coffee tastes excellent when made in one's own kitchen with a pour-over system and she hopes it's only a matter of time before home specialty coffee enthusiasts catch on too.