The Bolaven Plateau - Part 1 Coffee & Tea Heaven

The Bolaven Plateau is as famous for its landscape as for its coffee plantations. In addition to visiting a coffee and tea plantations, we visited 3 waterfalls - one of the is the highest fall in Laos - and a minority village. Our guide Chong - from our guest house - grew up and worked for over 15year on a plantation. To be precise, the coffee plantation we visited was his Uncles.On the tour with me where Louis, Jacqueline, Morgan and Aurelie. All from France. Since I arrived in Southern Laos, I seem to be speaking French rather than English. We spoke Franglish the whole day!



First the Coffee... & the Tea.
(The facts are from memory. I hope my memory is good)

The Bolaven Plateau rises to 100Om and is located to the East of Pakse. The plateau is very fertile and has the ideal conditions to grow coffee. The best quality coffee beans are grown between 700-1200m. The plateau is full of small coffee plantation and a few tea plantation. In the land not used for coffee, Bananas, Pineapples, rubber etc are also grown.They grow 2 variety of coffee, Robesta & Arabica. Robesta is a low quality coffee and used in the production of Instant coffee, Arabica, is the sought after high quality beans.

The French introduced coffee growingon the plateau a the beginning of the 20th century. They are still one the largest importeresof Laos coffee. The others being the Chinese and Vietnamise.

The local producers, pick, dry and roast themselves the beans. They then sell them on to a coffee wholesaler. Some are sold directly to a couple of large coffee companies.

The Robusta tree is taller than the Arabica tree. Coffee can be harvested from the tree from the age of 5. The trees have a usefull life expectancy of 90 years. The trees are pruned on a regular basis, to allow fresh growth. The pods - I refer to them as Pods rather than beans as the seed inside is what we know as the coffee bean. The pods are picked when they are red. These are the best. Confusingly, they pick the Green ones at the same time. My understanding is that it is to avoid repicking the same tree later. They coffee then of a mixzd quality. The picked pods are then laid out on a blanket and sun dried for up to 3 weeks. The pods are then ground to remove the shell and the beans which remain are roasted.

New trees are grown from seeds on the plantations nurseries. The seeds are grown in pots for up to 2 years before being planted on the land.












There are a few tea plantations scattered across the plateau. Traditionally, the tea plantation employ Vietnamese immigrants to pick the tea - Coffee plantation is a more local affair. The best tea leaves are those grouped in 3 - not really sure why this combination are the best tea leaves - To my surprise, tea are dried on a heated tabled, shredded by a rolling action and then roasted. It seems it not only coffee then. Jasmin is grown within the plantation and the flower is added to the tea leaves and gives the tea its distinctive flavour. Forgot to mention that they grow Green Tea - Sorry everybody for the limited or non existence description of tea making but I was not paying that much attention at the tea plantation. I was thinking photos at the time.