The history of coffee in Vietnam has a wild twist.
For a majority of Vietnam's coffee growing, it's always been Robusta Coffee. If ya don't know... Robusta is cheap, generally not the best tasting, and has high caffeine content compared to Arabica coffee.
Arabica is very flavorful, lower in caffeine content, and more expensive.
Arabica is very flavorful, lower in caffeine content, and more expensive.
Prior to the Vietnam War, Vietnam mostly grew Robusta Coffee and like everything else once the war started it decimated the coffee production in the country.
After the war, Vietnam got a kick start in coffee production from and unexpected place... East Germany.
Since communism works so well, East Germany couldn't afford to pay for coffee for it's people and were facing a lot of protests from their people about the "coffee"
The coffee in question was 44% cheap Robusta coffee mixed with other roasted herbs, nuts, or fillers... Which you can guess tasted terrible.
To work on a solution, East Germany struck a deal with Vietnam to send aid, machinery and experts to help build a coffee plantation.
In exchange, East Germany would get quality Robusta Coffee at an extreme discount, Vietnam would get a brand new and modern coffee plantation to begin producing coffee in large quantities again.
This started in the late 70s and took some time to get everything built, people trained, machines in place, and coffee planted and land prepared.
Once the coffee plants started to produce the cherries that would be ready to begin producing coffee it was 1989... the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Since East Germany was no longer a country.... the deal they had struck with Vietnam was essentially null and void.
Vietnam had come out with a stellar deal. Operational coffee farms and plantations, modern equipment, and living quarters for workers, and they didn't have to uphold their end of the deal in sending 50% of the coffee to East Germany at a heavy discount.
Since then, most if not all of the coffee out of Vietnam has been Robusta.
In the last decade or two... Vietnam has expanded more into Arabica coffee. Which currently only makes up 10% roughly of all of their coffee production.
In the last decade or two... Vietnam has expanded more into Arabica coffee. Which currently only makes up 10% roughly of all of their coffee production.
Vietnam Son La, which is the coffee in our new Limited run, Fortunate Son has a big bold body, rich buttery chocolate and cashew butter, and rich cocoa.
We're dropping this coffee Friday, August 30th!