About This Coffee
YePing, a woman who lives in Manmao village, founded Menglian Tianyu Farmers Cooperative in 2010. Manmao village is located in Southwest China near the border with Myanmar. People in the region typically make a living by cultivating tea.
YePing and her husband brought coffee to the region in 2007. It took some convincing for other villagers to begin cultivating coffee alongside or in lieu of tea, but they were persistent. YePing and her husband offered trainings to show their neighbors how to properly cultivate coffee and they promised to buy whatever coffee the others couldn’t sell.
They hit a major setback in 2013 when an intense frost killed all the coffee trees in their village but that didn’t stop them from continuing to plant and share coffee. YePing was the driving force behind alternative processing in Manmao and it’s her hard work that led them to begin using unique processing techniques like the Anaerobic Natural processed used for this lot.
By 2018, YePing’s coffees were placing Yunnan regional quality competitions. Her coffees placed again in 2019 and 2020. Today, her coffee is so popular that if you’re looking to buy from YePing and the Menglian Tianyu cooperative, you need to place your order early in the season when the cherry is still green!
Cultivation
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Cherry is selectively handpicked by smallholders and processed at a central processing site. Ripe, red cherry is placed in plastic barrels and sealed. Cherry ferments in this anaerobic environment for 10 to 15 days. Following fermentation, cherry is laid on raised beds to dry. Workers rake cherry frequently to ensure even drying. Once dry, cherry is bagged and stored in a warehouse for 1 to 3 months before being hulled and prepared for export.
Sucafina Yunnan
Despite not being well known for coffee production, Yunnan has the ideal conditions for specialty coffee production. We are building an increasing number of coffee projects as our presence in Yunnan increases. We see a lot of potential producer-partners who have previously sold their coffees to blenders. With some investment in training and infrastructure, a lot of hard work and a strong quality control system, we just know that coffee producers in Yunnan can shine. Learn more about our operations in Yunnan.
Coffee in China
The majority of coffee produced in China is grown in the Yunnan Province in western China. Our operations in the country are young, but through our partnerships and our Yunnan-based lab and wet & dry mills, we are able to offer a range of great value coffees that display uniformity and consistent profiles.
Sucafina has a lab, office, wet mill and dry mill in the heart of Munaihe, just outside of Pu’er. This small village is where most of the key traders and dry mills in Yunnan are based. We have a small but very experienced team who are committed to delivering coffees to the high quality and ethical standards of Sucafina.
The Yunnan team has worked to develop specific products to represent Yunnan coffees for Sucafina. These products span a quality and value range to allow for a dynamic offering to our clients. In a market where consistency has not always been a focus, we are excited by this opportunity to deliver reliable, quality coffees to our customers.
We have a strong local partnership with a company that enables our in-country financing, logistics and navigation of Chinese trade.
We also looking at China as a destination market and are working on establishing a position within China selling to domestic roasters.
Yunnan is a beautiful part of the world that offers many opportunities for coffees, both as unique offerings as well as making certain blends—such as washed milds—more robust & dynamic. We welcome anyone to come visit & explore what Yunnan has to offer.