New chapter at Langbiang Mountain

...So here we are, a truck with our belongings and a coffee roaster miraculously arrived. I was slowly starting to realize what I was getting into. A wooden house, several generations living together, and no one around to communicate with in English. Two years ago, Lim had to adapt to life in the big beach city, and now it was my turn to step outside of my comfort zone and try to adapt to something new. Agriculture was completely new to me, and suddenly, I found myself needing to understand an entirely different culture and learn how to work with farmers.

In the beginning, it was incredibly challenging. I was looking for the knowledge and inspiration from countries that were much further ahead in specialty coffee cultivation and processing. We had to change the entire system from the ground up, how coffee farms were managed, how cherries were harvested, selected, processed, dried, stored, and much more.

I was often seen as a fool because the farmers had long-established practices of commercial coffee production and they would say something along the lines:

But I was confident that with proper attention to detail, this region could produce exceptional coffee, bringing greater benefits to the farmers.

I have always enjoyed learning new things, researching, and selecting information, especially when I became passionate about something. However, manual labor was a different story, for most of my life, I worked at a computer. Constant small scratches, minor injuries, and awkward movements became my daily reality. Sometimes I even had to laugh at myself as the 'city boy' trying to become a coffee producer. To build at least some authority, I had no choice but to stop just speculating, put on my rubber boots, and try to pitch in. I could only hope that, despite my clumsiness, the locals would at least appreciate the effort.

We simply can't be good at everything, so I shifted my focus to how we could differentiate ourselves and make our product stand out. I became particularly fascinated by the processing, selection, fermentation, drying, and all the details required to produce amazing coffee. Right next to the house was an empty plot of land, so we decided to build a small greenhouse with raised beds, something I saw as a crucial step in improving quality.

First Harvest Season

The original plan was just to learn the basics of coffee processing. We wanted to gain experience on how it all worked, nothing too ambitious at the beginning. Surprise came when we sent our first coffee samples to roasters to get feedback, and the reactions were very positive. We didn't expect much, after all, everything was still new. But it turned out that the volcanic history of Langbiang Mountain, combined with fertile soils, ideal climate, and high elevation, gave us a strong advantage. With attention to detail and a lot of patience, we were able to produce very high-quality Arabica right from the start.

This gave us even more motivation, and we continued to produce larger quantities of coffee. It was amazing to roast the first batches for ourselves and our family, knowing we had complete control over the entire process from farm to final cup. As the bags of coffee piled up, I started thinking about trying to send 10 bags of green coffee (600 kg) to Slovakia.

It may seem like a lot, but know that in the coffee world, it’s really a minimum, especially when trying to ship it halfway across the world. With no experience regarding export/import or knowledge of the necessary documentation, it was a huge challenge. But I was determined to make it happen, as the thought of my friends and family back home enjoying our coffee pushed me forward. Looking back, it’s almost a mystery how that first shipment made it to Slovakia with only handwritten labels on the jute bags. But it was an important moment for us, and since then, we've been sending our coffee to Europe every year.

Today

We are approaching our seventh coffee harvest season. The journey has certainly not been without challenges, but I’m very proud that we’ve managed it together with Lim and the family. Each season, we gradually improve the quality as well as the efficiency of our work. During this time, I hope we've significantly improved the reputation of Vietnamese coffee worldwide. We’ve learned that patience is key and that meaningful changes don’t happen overnight.

The biggest driving force for me is seeing how much the whole family has progressed. We are currently working with over 30 smallholder farmers around Langbiang Mountain, and this year marked a significant milestone for us as we successfully filled our first container to Europe.

I hope this is just the beginning, as specialty coffee has become our life and passion, and as we have found out personally, there is a thin line between somebody who knows very little about it and someone who spends a lifetime mastering it.