Food & Wine Nepal – July 2019

(Jeff_L) #1

(16) Hospitality, Food & Wine, Monthly


Coverage


After the establishment of the country’s
first coffee manufacturing company
in 1983 in the form of Nepal Coffee
Company (NeCCo) in Manigram,
Rupandehi district, the coffee producers
were able to market and sell coffee.
NeCCo collected dry cherry from
the coffee producers and processed
the coffee for domestic market. Even
after the establishment of NeCCo, the
industry didn’t take off immediately.

A major issue being the lack of
knowledge and the lack of coffee
farmers proved to be a big hurdle.
NeCCo took the responsibilities upon
themselves to educate the farmers from
the rural mid-hills about the various
prospects of growing coffee beans.

Drinking coffee was a rare sight in the
past and a luxurious commodity for
many. It was a very acquired taste to
begin with and given that Nepali people
were accustomed to tea, the strong taste
of coffee was certainly a pushback. We
required people from foreign countries
to properly teach us the ways of coffee
and get used to it.

There are plenty of different coffee
beans, each with a variation in taste
but back then, coffee was plain and
simple like how many of us know it
today to be. It was mostly consumed
just like tea with a mixture of coffee
and milk. However, the coffee business

really took off once the country had an
increase in the number of tourists. The
same tourists also taught Nepali people
how to brew a proper cup of coffee
and taught them the basics of coffee
cultivation.

While coffee was always present in the
country, it was not until the 1980’s that
coffee really started to make strides in
the market. Coffee cultivations started
to pop up because the commodity
was doing well in the market. Various
plantations across the country also gave
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