Gukeng Coffee

Gukeng coffee is the revival of coffee cultivation in Taiwan, grown in Gukeng township in Yunlin county, on the central-south foothills of the Dajian mountain. Coffee was first planted in Taiwan during the Japanese era, in the 1930s, on experimental farms, the island's subtropical mountains being suitable for arabica, and Gukeng was one of the centres. Cultivation declined after WWII but was revived from the late 1990s by local farmers, the Yunlin county government designating Gukeng as a coffee zone in 2003 and founding the annual Taiwan Coffee Festival. Gukeng coffee is arabica, grown at 300 to 800 metres altitude, hand-picked and wet- or sun-dry-processed, and prized for a clean, bright acidity with nutty and fruity notes, milder and softer than the high-grown coffees of Central America but distinctive for its terroir. The beans are small-batch roasted, often by the farmers themselves, and brewed as pour-over or hand-drip to showcase the single-origin character. Gukeng remains small-scale and the coffee is sold locally and online rather than exported, a Taiwanese-grown coffee being a curiosity in a market dominated by imports.

A clean, bright, medium-bodied cup with a mild, sweet acidity, nutty and gently fruity, low in bitterness, with a soft, clean finish. Eaten with nothing, the single-origin character meant to lead; best hand-dripped and drunk warm.

Gukeng coffee's character comes from its subtropical, mid-altitude terroir and its small-batch roasting. The arabica bushes, grown at 300 to 800 metres on the Dajian mountain slopes, ripen slowly in the cool, misty climate, producing dense beans with a mild acidity and nutty sweetness, softer than high-grown equatorial coffees. The cherries are hand-picked when fully red, then either wet-processed, the fruit washed off and the bean fermented and washed, or sun-dried, the whole cherry dried with the bean inside for a fruitier flavour. The beans are roasted in small batches, often light to medium to preserve the origin character, the lighter the roast the more the terroir shows. The brewing method that best showcases a single-origin coffee is hand-drip or pour-over, where hot water just off the boil is poured slowly over ground coffee in a paper filter, the clean, bright cup that results revealing the bean's character without the heaviness of espresso or the bitterness of over-extraction. The brew is drunk warm, plain, with no milk or sugar to mask the flavour.