Central to the efforts is the Vietnam Amazing Cup, an annual coffee competition the province has organised since 2019.

In the competition, more than 200 speciality coffees in the province have been showcased and evaluated by the top coffee experts in the world. Their aromatic flavours have gained popularity and allowed Buôn Ma Thuột's coffees to enter high-end markets, including the EU and the US.

Đắk Lắk is also working on a scheme to expand farms of speciality coffee Robusta in its five communes, namely Ea Tân, Ea Toh, Hòa An, Ea Yoong, and Ea Tu, raising their coverage to 2,120 ha and output to 1,500 tonnes by 2030.

The government has recently approved the Master Plan for the Development of Đắk Lắk between 2021 and 2030 with a Vision to 2050, under which Buôn Ma Thuột aims to become "the world's coffee city" by 2050.

Lê Đình Tư, owner of the Aeroco Coffee Farm in Buôn Ma Thuột, who has won prizes in the Vietnam Amazing Cup for five consecutive years, said his nine-hectare farm is comprised of four layers of plants: the overstory layer, the understory layer, the coffee layer, and the ground layer.

The four-layer approach, coupled with a strict management process, has enabled Aeroco to yield coffee beans of high quality and aromatic flavours. Aeroco coffee has found its way to the EU, the US, Canada, China, and Japan. 

"We need large financial resources to finance training and experience-sharing programmes for coffee farmers to turn Buôn Ma Thuột into a global hub for speciality coffees," said Tư.

Trần Đình Trọng, Director of the Ea Tu Fair Agricultural Service Cooperative, said his 49-member cooperative has 320 ha of coffee farms, of which 260 ha is shared with other families.  

Its speciality coffees gaining ground globally bears witness to the claim that Đắk Lắk's coffees are good enough to win favours even with the most demanding consumers.

However, as speciality coffees make up a small portion of the coffee industry in Việt Nam, the government must take more measures to push them to the forefront and help speciality coffee producers expand their customer base.        

Trịnh Đức Minh, Chairman of the Buôn Ma Thuột Coffee Association, revealed that speciality coffees are referred to as "gourmet art" by coffee connoisseurs for their uniqueness from production to consumption.

"The global hub for speciality coffees can be built on the following pillars: a city of the best Robusta coffee in the world, a city of coffee festivals, and a centre for coffee research," said Minh. — VNS