PANGALENGAN, Indonesia -- When Wildan Mustofa ventured into the burgeoning specialty coffee market six years ago, he had already built a successful potato farming business on his plantations in the chilly highlands of Bandung, West Java. The new undertaking, though, took time to bear fruit.
"I wasn't very successful at first," said Mustofa, 50, standing 1,300km above sea level on Mount Riunggunung, where his coffee trees grow. "In 2015, I sold very good coffee through an exporter for a price of a lower grade."
Buyers were simply not familiar with coffee from West Java. Although Java itself is closely associated with coffee -- as in "a cup of Java" -- the region has long ceased to be a popular source of the crop. The western island of Sumatra is now the center of Indonesian coffee cultivation, and is known in the industry as a major source for Starbucks.
Overall, Indonesia lags behind Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam by coffee production volume. Not only that, but almost 90% of its production in the 2016 marketing year was Robusta -- beans commonly used for instant coffee and sold for about half the price of higher-quality Arabica.
Still, ambitious growers like Mustofa, who will be marking his fourth harvest this year, might just help the country become a more serious competitor.
"Buyers initially wanted my coffee to substitute for Sumatra when the harvest ended there," Mustofa said. "But when I sent it to them, they understood that it is very different. It tastes even better."
Waking up the world
In the world of specialty coffee, buyers closely scrutinize the sorting, washing and drying of the highest-graded Arabica beans. And so far, funding constraints and growing techniques have limited the expansion of Indonesia's specialty segment, leaving much of the production to farmers with small plantations.
But Mustofa is on a roll. Ranking highly at "cupping" contests in Australia and fetching high prices at U.S. auctions burnished his reputation. Last year, he courted several high-profile foreign buyers, including one in Norway. His beans have made their way to gourmet merchants such as Camel Coffee, which operates import specialty store chain Kaldi Coffee Farm in Japan.
One shop describes his coffee as having a "soft and flowery aroma, rich flavor and chocolaty aftertaste."
