When coffee aficionados think of the world’s great coffee growing regions, few will immediately think of Taiwan. But if the extravagant price a batch of Taiwanese coffee recently went for at an auction is any indication, it might not be too long before Taiwanese coffee is on the map.
Would you pay US$1,000 for a kilo of coffee? In the world of coffee connoisseurs, that’s not an outrageous proposition—even if the coffee comes from a relatively unknown region like the mountains of Taiwan’s Chiayi County.
The mountains of Chiayi are a famous tea-growing region, and since 2001, they’ve been producing coffee too. One local grower, Zhuo-Wu Café, has now shown just how far Chiayi’s coffee has come—and how great its potential is—at an international coffee competition and auction organized by the Council of Agriculture.
The event invited coffee buyers from 14 countries, including the US and Japan to bid on Taiwan-grown coffees. And the highest bid was for Zhuo-Wu Café’s beans, a kilo of which went for US$1,078. Experts praise the coffee’s sweet, fruity notes, with hints of tropical fruits such as passion fruit and mango.