Kunming's coffee bars and the Yunnan beans grown a day's drive south

Nearly all of China's coffee is grown in Yunnan, and the easiest place to taste it is a bar stool in Kunming. The beans come north from Pu'er and Baoshan, and the city's small roasters brew them with the patience usually given to tea.

A crop that came with a missionary

Coffee reached Yunnan in the early 1900s, when a French missionary planted trees at Zhukula, a hillside village in Binchuan county near Dali. Large-scale planting came much later, in the late 1980s, when farms around Pu'er switched to Catimor, a hardy arabica that still covers most of the province's slopes.

What to order at the counter

Menus call the local bean Yunnan xiaoli kafei (云南小粒咖啡), or Yunnan small-bean coffee, and list pour-over as shouchong (手冲). Name an origin, such as Pu'er, Baoshan or Dehong, and many baristas will set out two or three lots side by side, including natural and honey-processed coffees from single farms. Espresso blends tend to hide these differences, so a filter cup is the better introduction.

在昆明，一杯手冲往往从一句“今天有哪些云南豆”开始。

Retail bags are often labelled only in Chinese, with altitude, farm and process printed in small type. Photographing the label before you leave makes it easier to ask for the same lot at another roaster.

Timing a visit to the harvest

Coffee cherries ripen from roughly November to March. In those months roasters receive fresh lots and the farms around Pu'er are at their busiest. Pu'er is about three hours from Kunming by train on the China–Laos railway, close enough for an overnight trip that ends with a cup brewed beside the trees.