Gukeng and Taiwanese Coffee

Coffee was planted in Taiwan in the early twentieth century, largely for export, and the plantations were abandoned when that market disappeared. Gukeng, in the hills of Yunlin, was one of the places it had grown, and from the late 1990s farmers there replanted it, partly as a way out of a difficult market for other crops. The Huashan area above the town is now a scatter of small farms and hillside cafes looking out over the plain, most of them roasting what they grow. Alishan, Dongshan and several other districts do the same. Taiwanese coffee is produced in tiny volumes at high labour cost, which makes it some of the most expensive in the world for what it is.

What you actually see

• The Huashan hill road - small farms and roasteries strung along a ridge above the plain.
• The harvest - cherries picked by hand between roughly November and February.
• Roasting on the farm - growers processing and roasting their own small lots.
• The view over the plain - the flat Yunlin farmland seen from the coffee terraces.

When to go

October to March brings the harvest and the pleasant weather at the same time, and the hillside cafes are busiest then, especially at weekends when the road up can back up badly. Summer is hot and prone to afternoon storms. A coffee festival is held in the area in the autumn. You need a car or a scooter to reach the farms.

Honest expectations

The coffee is expensive, often several times the price of an imported specialty cup, and the quality is uneven, since many growers roast their own without much training. A good number of the hillside businesses are cafes with a view rather than working farms. Public transport effectively does not reach the plantations. Cloud can remove the view altogether.

Nearby

The Caoling gorge road and the Xiluo bridge are both in the same county.