One of the pleasures of dabbling in Thai coffee is accessing a world-class coffee that the world market has yet to discover. Another is dealing with producers who are working in a free-market environment and are extremely concerned both about the environment and the welfare of the communities in which they operate. Nacha family-owned, estate-grown coffees rely heavily on the support of their communities and they give back a lot in terms of infrastructure, assistance to education, and the general welfare. This reflects our own belief that coffee is a crop that is more than just a food procut, it has a vast effect on human culture and welfare, and has for over a century (it is currently the most traded commodity in the world after water and oil).
Thai coffee is exceedingly difficult to procure outside of Thailand. We looked for years to find Thai coffees in the USA, but mostly what wefind are powdered coffee mixtures with sugar and spices. Very sweet, they are intended to be used as a instant coffee or made into an iced drink. We were lucky to find Nacha coffee when we were down in Philadelphia having some coffee made into pods at ABCD-Pods. Nacha had found this vendor and was also podding some of their coffee into ESE espresso pods. We tried the coffee and were so imporessed we asked to be connected to the producer.
Nacha coffee is proactive in plans to distribute their line globally. Hopefully they will bring some further recognition of Thailand as a fine coffee-producing country (635,000 152-pound bags in 2008) as they pioneer the sale of roasted, branded coffee outside of their own country.