When I received my most recent copy of Standart Magazine and I reached the piece about Thai Dang, co-owner of Vietnamese specialty coffee roasters 96B, I was delighted. Thai is a stylish woman with bright red lipstick and thick-rimmed glasses who runs 96B alongside original founder Hana Choi, and who came into the world of specialty coffee from a completely different field; political science.
After Thai graduated with her Mphil from Oxford University, she spent some time working in Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong but it was at Coffee Sweet in Taipei where she had her real awakening. I can relate because I also had a very special coffee experience there a few years ago.
After returning to Vietnam, Thai went on the hunt to find the best specialty coffee in her home country and a potential career change. When I was in Vietnam back in 2007, I spent some time in Da Lat in the highlands where much of Vietnam’s coffee is grown and I became accustomed to drinking the uber-sweet Vietnamese coffee that fuels millions of people every day. But Thai was looking for something more elevated.
That’s when she came across 96B, a fine café that Hana had founded in 2016 and that had made a name for itself as a haven for high quality specialty coffees. After a while, Thai proposed to become co-owner and brought all of her experience in branding and operations to the table to push 96B into a new direction, sourcing and roasting.
Out of Vietnam’s annual production of around 1.88 million metric tonnes of coffee, only 3 percent is Arabica. That is probably also partially why it’s virtually impossible to find high quality Vietnamese Arabica coffee in Europe. But 96B doesn’t discriminate. As Thai explained to me over video call, at 96B they look for the most interesting and sustainable coffees out there, which include Arabica, Robusta and Liberica, a rare variety that is native to west and central Africa and that is hailed by many as a future-proof coffee species because it can grow at lower altitudes and is generally more resilient to environmental conditions and pests.
However, for 96B’s first Coffeevine feature, our goal was to focus on a rare Arabica lot that would really tell the story of the country as a coffee producer and the work that 96B does with farmers. Almost all of the coffees that it purchases are sourced directly from farmers who also set the prices. This allows producers to value their own coffees and earn a much better price than the fair trade norm.
The coffee that I picked for the November 2024 Coffeevine edition is an experimental Tha1 variety that was produced by Radar Farms in Da Lat. This variety is a hybrid between native Vietnamese and Ethiopian varieties and was first developed 25 years ago in an effort to create new high-yielding and resistant varieties that can offer a path forward for coffee farmers during times of climate change. It is a sweet and vibrant coffee that has characteristics of Catimor and Ethiopian heirloom varieties and this will be the first time that 96B is available anywhere in Europe.
Want to explore the world of exceptional coffees? Then be sure to order yours.
To receive this excellent coffee or to order any of our other offerings, just visit our shop now.
Pre-orders close on 15.11.2024 / Ships globally on 20.11.2024
