Taiwan Chiayi Meishan coffee

This year has been unusually warm and dry in Taiwan. In December we visited some of our friends and farmers in the Meishan mountain range. Even this late in the year, temperatures see daily highs exceeding 30 degrees Celsius and - for this region at least - rainfall has been sparse. 

Even at 1,500m elevation, Taiwan’s infrastructure is very developed and reliable. So we can visit the most remote farms in the course of a day. Our fleeces and rainwear stayed unused in backpacks, but we were grateful for hats and sunglasses. 

Tea farms appear above 1,000m elevation, the ordered cultivation in sharp contrast to the steep mountain landscape. While tea farming continues a healthy and high profile crop for Taiwan, we observe many new investments in coffee plantations as tea farmers look to diversify their crop and leverage the incredible learnings the market leaders have made introducing coffee to mares acres. 

Our visit today was to a well established family tea farm which made the decision to diversify to coffee only seven years ago. Their initial planting of 300 tress over several coffee varietals has led to outstanding results in coffee beans already being recognised at competition. This success encourages them to experiment with more varietals to test which might benefit from this amazing terroir. 

The 2024 harvest is underway and we’re working with this - and our other farming partners - to bring this year’s crop to market via a variety of precessions methods. Look out for our Meishan water, honey and sun dried roasted beans to be available soon.