STiR coffee and tea magazine

20 STiR coffee and tea | 2022 Issue 5 (October/November) Yunnan's hundreds of coffee businesses range from smallholder farms to large-scale, vertically integrated growers and packagers. Joshua Jagelman, managing director of Yunnan Coffee Traders (YCT) is one of the progenitors of Yunnan's specialty coffee industry. YCT operates and partners with farms in the province's Menglian, Xishuangbanna, and Pu'er regions. It also operates a wet mill, nursery, and R&D plantation at their flagstone wet mill in Menglian. As a specialty-grade producer, YCT typically exports only about 10 containers per year, alongside sales to China's domestic market. The core team comprises a head of coffee, head of exports, wet mill manager, and a global sales manager, with mill work- ers and coffee harvesters seasonally employed. YCT sells to more than 15 countries, led by the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. In an email interview, Jagelman enlightened STiR on Yunnan's coffee past, coffee present, and coffee to come. When did China's premium coffee culture develop? China was featured as the Portrait Country at the SCA's Specialty Coffee Expo in 2018. This was a huge nod to China as an emerging origin for specialty coffee. Even in the years before this, we saw rapid development in China specialty coffee as both a producer and consumer. China's sophisticated tea culture, which shares similarities with specialty coffee, has fast-tracked interest and understanding of specialty coffee in the local market. This means that specialty coffee is finding ready buyers in the domestic market and is not dependent on export growth for industry growth. The mature supply chain that exists in China, paired with early investments in commodity coffee, has also accelerated the development of specialty coffee. Q|A: Joshua Jagelman of Yunnan Coffee Traders Jagelman works with farms throughout the province, exporting specialty-grade beans to more than 15 countries. Q A

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