26th February: Dalat, Vietnam

Today was a chance to do something special! We got a taxi out of town through the pine forests and into the hills where coffee grows, and poly tunnels sit in the valleys between. We were dropped at the end of the twisting road and walked on along the single-track path until we reached Son Pacamara.

We were greeted by a man, full of enthusiasm, who we would soon learn to be the owner, Son. We’d booked ourselves in for a coffee tour and tasting session. As we were a little early (well, strictly speaking the only other person was late), Son made us some special coffee. He ground some geisha beans, which he just grows for himself and doesn’t sell, and made us incredibly fragrant coffee using a V60. Apparently, these are a super highly rated sub-variant of arabica and would be many thousands of dollars per kilogram, if he was to produce them in such volumes for sale. We’d learn later that geisha was one of five types of coffee beans grown by Son.

Once the other guest – a Vietnamese man from Hanoi – arrived, Son made us another coffee. This time, it was brewed in a similar way but from his signature pacamara beans. Whilst we sipped our way through the second incredible coffee of the morning, Son began teaching us about all things coffee. I knew it was complicated, but the number of different factors involved at every step of the journey towards making the perfect cup is quite extraordinary. I can see how people spend their whole lives trying to perfect the art.

Coffee only grows in the ‘coffee belt’ within the tropics but this isn’t the only geographical aspect at play. The first factor Son focused on was the pH of the soil. Here in Dalat, the soil is around pH 5 to 6, which means that the full annual cycle of bean production takes a little longer than in neutral soils, at 9-10 months. This is good because it means longer for the bean to ripen and develop more complex sugars and acids, which in turn give more interesting flavours. Elevation is also key to this as cooler temperatures and higher UV levels mean that the plant can put more energy into reproduction (the bean) than survival. Another survival factor for the coffea plant that is related to elevation actually impacts the caffeine content of the cup. Lower oxygen levels at altitude mean that there are fewer natural pests. Therefore, the plant needs to produce less natural insecticide in order to keep them at bay. That insecticide? Caffeine.

Therefore, the two major types of coffea plants are adapted to grow best at different altitudes. Beans from Robusta plants have around 3 to 5% caffeine content, whilst those from arabica plants lead to levels of 0.7 to 1.3%. The approximate lower limit for growing the more sought after arabica beans is around 800m elevation, but each specific sub-species has its own niche. Son Pacamara sits at around 1,500 metres up, making it and the other nearby farms a perfect place for arabica production. Everywhere else in Vietnam, the coffee grown is the harsher and stronger robusta, characterised by a sourer taste and which lacks the acids which give arabica such a pleasing and complex flavour.

Lesson over and coffee drunk, we took a walk through Son’s extraordinary hillside farm. It’s a small place but he still has around 10,000 plants. The farm appears to be run as an accidental permaculture project, with canopy trees growing amongst the coffea plants to provide approximately 50% shade. The majority of the beans produced here are of the pacamara variety. These come from a hybrid plant from two different branches of the arabica family (a typica called maragogype and a bourbon called pacas). Coffee cherries ripen at different rates, so must be picked by hand before being wet sorted to eliminate unripe or empty beans. Next, the cherries are fermented for a few days before being dried until they fall below a certain moisture content. Once this has happened and the beans have been hulled from their husks, the roasting process can begin. That’s a whole other set of complications and potential options! We didn’t go into that today, however, as we’d decided to do some tasting instead.

Son prepared 4 coffees in identical cups, and we were to score each on fragrance/aroma, flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body, and balance. The task was to then try to guess the bean type used for each from what we’d learned! Easy said than done. I’d loved the pacamara, so was determined to pick this out. Fortunately, I was the only one to get this correct and had scored it similarly to the professionals! I think we’ll call that beginners luck. I also nailed the robusta, but interestingly Kaja (who, in fairness, doesn’t usually drink coffee) and the other person both had pacamara and robusta the other way around. The two I struggled with were the two mid-ranking beans, which I got wrong and was much further away from the official scores than everybody else. I thought about bringing a small bag of pacamara beans home but baulked at the £30 price tag! Still, we were very lucky to have tried these amazing coffees and seen up close how they’re made. Son was an amazing host and teacher, and this was one of my favourite experiences of the trip.

Walking back up to the main road to meet our Grab driver, a maintenance crew stopped us for a chat. None of us could understand each other but the gist seemed to be that I was really tall and one of them was really short. Naturally, he insisted on us having photos taken together!

We got dropped near the buffet Kaja had been to yesterday. The friendly staff were trying to get us try everything and I definitely ate too much! After wandering back to the room, we went to check out the nearby attraction known as the ‘crazy house’. This was allegedly inspired by Gaudi and based upon banyan trees, but to me it felt like an exhibit from a low budget kids theme park.

One thing I’ve been wanting to do for ages was to have a game of pool or snooker. There are loads of billiards clubs here, but most seem quite smoky and intimidating. Today, we found one that Kaja was happy to go into and had an hour of fun on super-quick tables. It was much trickier than playing on a pub table in the UK! Still, for £1.50 an hour, which included somebody who ran over to set the balls up as soon as the game finished, we couldn’t go wrong.

People in Vietnam are crazy drivers. It works on motorbikes as everyone can easily weave past each other, something that we’ve happily adapted to. The issue is that people drive cars as if they’re motorbikes, beeping at everything in their path and not giving way when they’re supposed to. I love the laid-back culture here but one issue is that people rarely call each other out for selfish behaviour because of the fear of losing face. I have no such fear, however, and had to remonstrate with one drivist who seemed to have a relaxed attitude towards attempted murder. Roads successfully survived for today, we retreated to the room to munch on our snacks. The local strawberries weren’t quite as ripe as we’d hoped but the pastries made up for them with a cup of tea!