Republic of the Union of Myanmar

Over the last decade, work is being done by USAID, CQI, & Winrock to help foster a culture for coffee excellence in Myanmars coffee growing regions. The work begins at the farmer level and goes all the way up the production chain. The hope is that coffee producers in Myanmar can compete with other coffee producers in the global specialty market. Certainly, this is no easy feat. Since there is a direct correlation to quality and price, the communities can reap the benefits or producing and selling a higher quality product. That is the hope at least. The specialty coffee market in Myanmar is still relatively unknown, so the producers struggle to get their coffee into the world market.

The coffees in this region are like nothing you would expect. Clean, Sparkling, & Sweet. Some with notes of a lifesaver pineapple candy, or strawberry jam and others with the complexity of a great Kenyan Coffee. I was truly blown away by the flavor spectrum of these coffees, but more than that, I was impressed by how engaged the farmer/producers were. Every producer wanted to know how their coffees fared so that they could improve their coffees for the next season. You got an immediate sense that specialty coffee was taken very seriously and that they all had a common goal.