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Listening to the "rumble" sound of the coffee machine extracting coffee, a refreshing cup of coffee in the morning seems to have become the standard for many migrant workers. Coffee has become more and more deeply involved in our lives, and people's requirements for coffee quality are getting higher and higher.
With the deepening of the Belt and Road Initiative, the cooperation between the countries behind these coffees and China has become more and more frequent, providing more high-quality choices and a broad market for Chinese coffee lovers, and coffee has also become a "Silk Road good" in everyone's hands. Gu Qinru, a bean hunter from Nanjing, has deeply experienced the changes.
Bean Finder: Now there's a smoother bean search process
As a bean hunter, Gu Qinru's daily routine is to fly to various coffee producing areas around the world to find high-quality coffee beans and decide whether they need to be purchased and imported into China.
△ Gu Qinru at the Hartman Manor in Panama
Gu Qinru travels to Ethiopia, Panama, Costa Rica, Kenya, Ecuador and other countries all year round, and in order to purchase high-quality green coffee beans, she often needs to go up to the mountains to find beans. ”
△ Gu Qinru in the Ecuadorian coffee producing region
In fact, for Gu Qinru, one of the major difficulties in finding beans is that it takes a long time on the road. At the beginning, the infrastructure of the countries that Gu Qinru went to was not very good. "We sometimes had to drive seven or eight hours to get from one estate to another. "When roasting coffee bean samples, there are often power outages, which makes it impossible to continue the work.
△ Gu Qinru communicated with the champion of the brewing competition in Costa Rica
With the Belt and Road Initiative, many of these countries have become partners. The most intuitive feeling for Gu Qinru is, "The road over there has become better." ”
"Every time I go to Ethiopia, I feel that the people there are very nice to us, and one of the things they often talk about is that we built their highways. We found that the highway over there looked exactly like China, and the street signs were the same, except that the text on them was in their local language. ”
As a supplier of specialty green coffee beans, Gu Qinru is more concerned about whether coffee cooperation can be smoother. For example, Honduras, "When I first went there, these countries were exporting coffee beans to China for the first time, and there was no relevant policy support. Thanks to the formal establishment of diplomatic relations, our cooperation with Sweet Orange Estate in Honduras has resumed again, and just 5 green beans arrived in October. ”
Coffee shop owner: There are more and more varieties of high-quality coffee beans from the "Silk Road".
On the corner of Sanyuan Lane in Nanjing, there is a small shop called "Geisha Village Coffee". The name "Geisha Village" comes from the Geisha Village Garden in Ethiopia, the country where coffee originated, where the famous coffee variety "Geisha" was discovered.
△ Laohang's coffee shop is filled with hand-roasted "Geisha" coffee beans
Lao Hang, the owner of the coffee shop, told reporters that he was a specialty coffee maker, and among the various varieties of coffee beans, he finally chose "Geisha" as his track.
Lao Hang started his own coffee shop more than 10 years ago. With the deepening of his understanding of the coffee industry, Lao Hang is no longer satisfied with making ordinary coffee, but hopes to improve the taste, so he began to make a self-roasting coffee shop.
△ Lao Hang's coffee
At first, Lao Hang struggled to find coffee beans that satisfied him on the Internet, so he began to cooperate with some green bean merchants in Shanghai. Today, Lao Hang and Gu Qinru's company is also a deep partner. Lao Hang usually buys some high-quality coffee beans through green bean merchants and comes back to roast them by himself, and makes the coffee beans show different flavors through different roasting techniques, so as to express his understanding of coffee.
Lao Hang obviously feels that the quality of coffee has improved a lot in recent years. "Whether it's the quality of the coffee beans they import into China, or the grade of the estate itself, I feel that it has been exploding in recent years. Lao Hang found that the coffee chambers of those countries took the initiative to participate in the expo in China, and the varieties of good coffee beans also increased.
The industrial chain: behind a cup of coffee
"I'll give you a taste of nearly 50,000 yuan a pound of coffee beans today. Gu Qinru selected a packet of Geisha green beans from Panama's melon and fruit estate from her roastery and grinded the coffee beans on the spot. With the roar of the machine, the aroma of coffee beans begins to fill the air.
△ Gu Qinru roasted coffee beans in the company
"Smell it. Gu Qinru handed the freshly ground coffee beans to the reporter, and a clean fruity aroma came out of the finely crushed coffee powder, as if people felt that the coffee beans had just been picked from the tree.
△ Gu Qinru is making pour-over coffee
Take out the glass, put the filter cup, and then put in the folded trapezoidal filter paper. After humidifying the filter paper, pour in 13.5 grams of ground coffee, and brew with about 195 ml of hot water for about two minutes, and a cup of fruity hand-poured coffee is ready.
△ Gu Qinru is checking the quality of green coffee beans
"The latter part of the drink will give you a kind of fruitiness, as well as a little bit of chocolate tone, and the taste will be very round. Gu Qinru told reporters that every sip of good coffee can bring people a different experience, and with the reduction of temperature, it can produce different levels of flavor, such as berries, raisins, jasmine, gardenias, etc.
This high-quality taste is due to the superior geographical environment and climatic factors of the coffee origin, high altitude and large temperature difference between day and night, which make them naturally competitive in coffee cultivation, so people are often more willing to import coffee beans from these countries.
And from the beginning of sowing, from a coffee bean to a cup of coffee, there are many links behind it.
When the coffee trees bear fruit, they are harvested by local farmers. After a series of green bean treatments such as washing, sun drying, and honey treatment, they are then dried, screened/graded, and finally bagged to become a commodity purchased by green bean merchants. After being hand-selected by merchants like Gu Qinru, they are imported into China and then handed over to coffee shop owners like Lao Hang to buy. It is roasted and ground by various coffee shops, and finally turned into an aromatic cup of coffee.
Market prospects: The Belt and Road Initiative has accelerated the development of the global coffee industry
Today, the aroma of coffee from Belt and Road partners has spread all over China. According to the data, the total amount of coffee exported from Costa Rica to China has increased year by year, from 41.6 tons in 2013 to 414.6 tons in 2021, an increase of nearly 10 times.
Although Lao Hang's "Geisha Village" has not been established for a long time, he is still very confident in the operation of this small shop. The "Belt and Road" initiative has allowed more coffee bean varieties to enter China, and for Lao Hangzhou, it is not difficult to choose beans now, as long as you are willing to spend money.
"Making coffee is not a simple thing, and it contains the experience that our group of coffee lovers have accumulated over the years. Lao Hang said that he plans to decorate the small shop next, so that more customers can enjoy the leisurely treatment brought by a cup of coffee.
China is one of the fastest-growing coffee markets in the world. According to a survey report released by the French consulting company Boshengxuan, the Chinese market is expected to consume 10 cups of coffee per capita in 2023, and by 2025, the value of China's coffee market will reach 219 billion yuan, with huge development potential. More and more coffee lovers like Lao Hang have become a booster in this potential market.
△Kunshan Coffee Creative Industry Center
In addition, there are places like Kunshan that are making every effort to build the coffee industry. The staff of the Kunshan Coffee Creative Industry Center told Modern Express that they pull green beans from these countries to Kunshan for processing, and then transport them from Kunshan to the Yangtze River Delta and other regions.
△Coffee beans from "Belt and Road" partners displayed in the Kunshan Coffee Creative Industry Center
Through the "Belt and Road" business exchanges, Kunshan imported coffee beans from Ethiopia, Kenya, Vietnam and other countries, and relied on Shanghai, the largest coffee consumer in China, to quickly establish a coffee industry chain. Now, it brings together green beans from 14 countries around the world, which can meet 60% of the country's green coffee roasting volume.
For Ms. Gu, she hopes that more countries will join the Belt and Road Initiative and sign trade and tariff-related agreements with China to reduce the cost of importing green beans. "I also hope that Chinese coffee can be exported to these countries, so that they can also taste coffee from China. ”
Honduras, which just joined the initiative this year, can't wait to start exporting coffee to China. In September, 38 tons of coffee beans from the local Kapkas Coffee Cooperative embarked on a journey to China, marking the full development of practical cooperation between China and Hong Kong. It is believed that more such cooperation will be carried out in the future.
Modern Express + Reporter Long Qiuli/Text Liu Chang/Photo
(Some of the materials are provided by the interviewee, proofread by Zhang Hongxia)