云南咖啡香飘世界：晴开农场咖啡第三次入选星巴克臻选

Brief (coffeeyo.com): Under a clear sky, a cup of clear coffee from the mountains of Pu’er is drifting farther afield with growing confidence. In 2025, Chaohao News followed a Yunnan coffee origin trip into the deep mountains of Pu’er and met farmer Cai Qingkai. This year, the beans from his Qingkai Farm were selected for the Starbucks Reserve series for the third time — a three-layered flavor footnote to two decades of his cultivation, and a Chinese coffee narrative rooted in the land and bound for specialty.

Under a clear sky, a cup of clear coffee from the mountains of Pu’er is drifting farther afield with growing confidence. In 2025, a Chaohao News reporter, on a Yunnan coffee origin-tracing trip, went into the deep mountains of Pu’er and had a brief acquaintance with farmer Cai Qingkai. This year, the beans from his Qingkai Farm were selected for the Starbucks Reserve series for the third time — the most layered three-stage flavor footnote to his two decades of cultivation, and a Chinese coffee narrative rooted in the land and bound for specialty.

2019 was a highlight moment for Cai Qingkai. That year, “Qingkai Farm Reserve Coffee Beans” became the first Starbucks China coffee bean named after a farmer, debuting at the 2nd China International Import Expo — Yunnan coffee, under its own terroir, faced the world directly.

Back then, like many newly center-stage, Cai mixed surprise with a touch of greenness. From truck driver to coffee farmer, he took thirteen years to complete the turn, and Starbucks’ Yunnan Coffee Farmer Support Center became the staunch backbone of his transformation. Through systematic training in planting shade trees, pest control, and fertilizer use, it helped him reform existing processing methods; a combination of moves let him truly grasp, for the first time, the weight of the words “specialty coffee.”

Then in 2020, Cai’s beans stood out again for superior quality and retained the Starbucks Reserve selection. But that harvest season was especially unforgettable. With the sudden pandemic, outside pickers couldn’t enter the village; Cai and his family, four pairs of hands and one heart, harvested the ripe coffee cherries almost without sleep. He believed that even amid heavy clouds, perseverance would eventually part them to reveal the moon. That year, he understood more deeply than anyone the meaning of “hold through the clouds to see the moon.” He shared this joy with coffee-growing friends around him, letting them see hope, keep planting, and grow better Yunnan coffee.

During this period, Starbucks took root in Yunnan, quietly supporting Qingkai and farmers like him who till the land diligently. Under the “Shared Planet · Coffee and Farmer Equity” (CAFE) social-impact program, he founded the Qingkai Coffee Professional Cooperative; over 20 farming households joined, and more than 2,000 mu of coffee land spread across Pu’er’s mountains as a blueprint of hope.

In 2021, he began trying to plant the “Sarchim” coffee variety. Born in Portugal and locally improved in Pu’er’s high-altitude mountains, Sarchim combines high-quality flavor genes with resilient vitality. This year, it was Sarchim, entering full production, that earned Cai his third Starbucks Reserve selection. Washed-processed, these beans show an elegant bergamot aroma, interwoven with delicate osmanthus-like floral notes, and a finish carrying a hint of honeyed roundness.

Speaking of the secret to standing out, he explained unhurriedly — the key to good coffee is quality and stability. During cultivation, soil testing and formula-based fertilization give coffee trees more precise effective nutrition and ensure quality; during micro-washing primary processing, quality is kept controllable. Cai’s confidence owes much to the deep empowerment of the CAFE program — soil testing, precision fertilization, and aid in building a micro-washing primary-processing center gave planting direction and steady assurance to farmers.

Now, raising a cup of coffee he grew with his own hands, Cai’s eyes hold more composure. This composure is the accumulation of two decades bending over the mountains, and witness to Starbucks and Yunnan coffee growing together.

Twenty years bowed over the wild mountains — from a driver fueled by coffee to a farmer remembered by the world; from lone groping to the scaled practice of a cooperative; from solving “survive planting” to pursuing “plant well,” “plant steadily,” and “plant with character” — Cai Qingkai’s coffee life is precisely the epitome of China’s specialty-coffee rise. And this two-way journey between Starbucks and Yunnan has long surpassed commercial cooperation: it is the patience of technology reaching downward, the watchfulness of long-termism, and a shared belief in land, people, and the essence of flavor. (Images: interviewee)

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