From Đắk Lắk to Helsinki — Our Origin Trip
27 July 2026 · Cela Coffee · ☕ 2 min read
Every year we visit the farms in Vietnam's Central Highlands where our coffee is grown. Here's what those trips look like — and why they matter for what ends up in your cup.
Why we make the trip
Most coffee changes hands five to seven times between the farm and the roastery. Every middleman takes a cut. Farmers earn the least. Nobody in the chain has much reason to invest in quality.
We do it differently. We work directly with three farming cooperatives in Đắk Lắk and Lâm Đồng — no traders, no brokers, no commodity market. This means we pay farmers more, we know exactly how the coffee is grown, and every bag on our shelf has a real story behind it.
The annual trip is how we keep that relationship real.
The setting
The Central Highlands of Vietnam are a coffee-growing paradise. The soil is deep, red, and volcanic — ancient basalt full of the minerals coffee plants love. Elevation ranges from 500 to 900 metres, ideal for Robusta. The monsoon season brings just the right amount of rain.
Buôn Ma Thuột, the capital of Đắk Lắk province, is the unofficial coffee capital of Vietnam. Every second building seems to be either a coffee shop, a roaster, or a farm equipment supplier.
What a farm visit looks like
Our main partner in Đắk Lắk runs a family cooperative with 3.5 hectares of Robusta at 750 metres elevation. Two generations of the same family have farmed this land.
A typical visit includes:
- Walking the fields. Checking plant health, harvesting technique, and shade coverage.
- Reviewing drying beds. Cherries here are sun-dried on raised screens for 18–22 days, not on the ground.
- Cupping the harvest. Multiple lots side-by-side, scored blind. We selected three lots on this trip.
- Discussing next steps. Sustainability trials, pricing, delivery schedule for the year.
What direct trade actually means
"Direct trade" gets used a lot in coffee marketing. Here's what it means for us in practice:
- We pay 25–40% above the market price for coffee meeting our quality standards.
- We pre-finance the harvest — farmers receive 50% of the payment before they pick, so they don't need to borrow at high interest rates.
- Every lot is traceable, from the specific farm all the way to the roast batch on your bag.
The sustainability piece
Water use is a growing concern in the region. Traditional coffee processing uses a lot of it, and monsoon patterns are becoming less predictable each year.
Our partner cooperative is piloting a new low-water fermentation method that cuts water use by about 40% without affecting cup quality. We saw the results on this trip. It's an important step forward for the region.
From farm to your kitchen
Green coffee from our spring visit is now in rotation across our range. It travels from farm to our Helsinki roastery in six to eight weeks. From there, it's roasted to order and shipped fresh to you.
If you want to taste the difference direct trade makes, try our Robusta whole beans and Arabica whole beans side by side.
Try it with our beans
