Bolaven Plateau

The Bolaven Plateau is where Lao coffee grows. On this volcanic upland in the far south, around the town of Paksong, farmers grow robusta and the rust-resistant arabica Catimor on fertile red basaltic soil, cooled by altitude and watered by ample rain. French colonists planted the first coffee here a century ago; today the plateau grows most of the country’s crop, protected as the geographical indication Bolaven Coffee.

The short version

• 80–95% of Lao coffee.
• About 1,000–1,350 metres, on red basaltic soil.
• Robusta and Catimor.
• A GI: Bolaven Coffee.
• Harvest October to January; robusta from February.

What does Bolaven coffee taste like?

There is no official profile, but the Bolaven Plateau Coffee Producers Cooperative, CPC, describes its coffees:

Coffee	CPC’s description
Arabica, fully washed	Light, subtly acid and aromatic, with fruity flavours
Robusta, fully washed	Subtly light and round, with a balance of acidity and bitterness
Robusta, natural	Good body, slight acidity and some chocolate flavours; the traditional process on the plateau

Source: Bolaven Plateau Coffee Producers Cooperative. CPC adds that Bolaven robusta is less pungent than most. Coffee Review scored a peaberry espresso from a Bolaven producer group 89 in 2015, with orange zest, baker’s chocolate, oak and honeysuckle.

At Laos’s first national green coffee competition, in 2021, judged to Coffee Quality Institute standards, a Starbucks judge described aromas of baking cinnamon, wine, red fruit, cardamom and brown sugar and flavours of florals, tobacco, honey, grapefruit and vanilla. The top coffee, a natural arabica from the Jing Jhai cooperative, scored 85.35, and a robusta from Bolaven Farms scored 84.31. Khamborisouth Sackda, whose family farm at 950 metres grows both, finds the robusta fuller-bodied and the arabica milder, WIPO reports. A grower with the Bolaven coffee producers’ cooperative, CPC, puts the difference down to the volcanic soil, which gives Bolaven coffee “its sourness, bitterness and smell”, Comunicaffe reported. The national competition has become an annual event, run by the Lao Coffee Association to Coffee Quality Institute criteria; its third edition, in 2023, was judged in person on the plateau by 11 international judges with local Q-graders, KPL, the national news agency, reported.

The plateau

The plateau lies mostly in Champasak province, with its edges in Salavan, Sekong and Attapeu, between the Annamite Range on the Vietnamese border and the Mekong, at about 15°N. Its elevation is about 1,000–1,350 metres, Wikipedia says, though another account gives 800–1,350 metres. WIPO credits the GI coffee’s character to the plateau’s high elevation, fertile red basaltic soil and ample rainfall. The Bolaven Plateau Coffee Producers Cooperative, with 1,855 member households from 55 villages in Champasak, Salavan and Sekong, and the Jhai Coffee Farmers Cooperative in Paksong are among its best-known producer groups, FFTC says.

How much coffee does it grow?

Most of Laos’s. Estimates of its share run from 80% to 95%, and an older figure put it at 99%. Nationally, Lao statistics counted 150,800 tonnes on 93,300 hectares in 2017, but an FFTC study reported only 30,000 tonnes harvested in 2021, as farmers turned to cassava and struggled with labour and climate. Laos exported over 50,000 tonnes in 2024.

From French plantations to Catimor

French colonists introduced coffee to Laos in the 1910s or 1920s and, after trials in the north, settled on the south, where the volcanic soils suited it, Wikipedia says. War, frost and rust then held production back for decades, WIPO reports. After the New Economic Mechanism of 1986, a new arabica variety was distributed on the plateau from the end of the 1990s, and from the early 2000s many farmers gave up rice, and dug out robusta and tea, to plant Catimor.

Bolaven Plateau and other Lao origins

• Coffee in Laos: the whole country, its exports and its history.
• Coffee in Vietnam: across the Annamite Range, and a leading buyer of Lao coffee.
• Lao sock coffee: how the plateau’s robusta is often drunk.