China - Aqi Badu

It’s not quite as fanciful as Ethiopia’s origin claim over coffee, but French missionaries first brought coffee plants to China in the late 1800s, predominately planting in Yunnan, the most southwestern province (which benefits from the Tropic of Cancer running though the south). China’s coffee growth didn’t cause much of a stir until the 90s when big companies, such as Nestlé and Starbucks, began investing. Today, coffee is cultivated across 120,000 hectares – still small-talk when you consider tea’s claim to over 3 million hectares of land.

But the direction of coffee production and consumption is changing. 400 million millennials have opened-up the demand for coffee in China – long viewed as a luxury, rather than a daily ritual – with this mid 80s-early noughties generation influenced by the larger coffee landscape, looking to drink out or takeaway from a cafe, rather than a cup of instant at home. Enter, the burgeoning speciality coffee scene, and the world stage.