Vietnam

Coffee arrived in Vietnam with French colonists in the 1850s, but it was the doi moi economic reforms of the late 1980s that turned the country into a production powerhouse almost overnight. Within a couple of decades Vietnam rose to become the world's second largest coffee producer overall and, by a wide margin, the largest producer of robusta. The industry is concentrated in the red basalt soils of the Central Highlands, where smallholders converted land once used for other crops into dense robusta groves.

The cup is unmistakably robusta: bold, heavy-bodied, low in acidity, high in caffeine, with a bittersweet, sometimes woody or rubbery edge. Much of it is destined for instant coffee and for Vietnam's own strong domestic drinking culture, where it is served thick and sweetened, dripped through a small metal phin filter into condensed milk for ca phe sua da, or whisked into the frothy egg coffee (ca phe trung) associated with Hanoi.

Dak Lak province, and its capital Buon Ma Thuot, is considered the heart of Vietnamese coffee and is often called the country's coffee capital. Further south, the cooler highlands around Da Lat in Lam Dong province grow arabica at higher altitude, and a small but growing specialty movement is working to show that Vietnam can produce more than bulk robusta.