Gia Lai

North of the heartland

Gia Lai sits directly north of Đắk Lắk on the same basalt plateau, centred on the city of Pleiku. The geology is similar, so is the altitude (mostly 500 to 800 metres), and the harvest runs on the same November to January calendar.

What differs is scale and structure. Gia Lai has less coffee than Đắk Lắk, fewer large exporters, and a higher proportion of small household farms, many of them worked by Jarai and Bahnar families whose communities long predate the coffee.

Drying

A great deal of Gia Lai’s crop is still dried in front yards on tarpaulins rather than on concrete patios or raised beds. Tarpaulins cost almost nothing and roll up when it rains, and a farmer selling into the commodity market is paid nothing extra for a better surface, even though the surface does a great deal to decide how clean the cup is.

What it tastes like

Gia Lai robusta is commonly described as heavier and sweeter than Đắk Lắk’s: dark chocolate, molasses, earthy, full-bodied. Some of that is attributed to soil and slightly higher rainfall.

Treat it as a broad tendency rather than a fact about the province. The variation between a carefully dried lot and a yard-dried one from the same district is larger than the variation between districts.

If you see it on a bag

Gia Lai rarely appears by name outside Vietnam. When it does, it usually means a producer or an exporter has deliberately separated the lot, and in practice that tends to go with having invested in drying beds.