The GDR and Vietnam: From Fake Coffee to Coffee Empire
katjahoyer.ukI was just in Hanoi, and some of their roasters are incredible value for money.
Lots of co-fermented specialty Vietnam-grown Robusta and Liberica at incredible prices, far cheaper than what people would find from roasters that import their beans from Colombia or any of the other big coffee-growing countries.
> Lots of co-fermented specialty Vietnam-grown Robusta and Liberica at incredible prices, far cheaper than what people would find from roasters that import their beans from Colombia or any of the other big coffee-growing countries.
Robusta at least is substantially cheaper, because yields are better and it’s less affected by disease. I don’t know enough about Liberica to know how it yields.
Also, “co-fermented coffee” generally is just code for flavored pre-roast flavored these days, especially out of Colombia. Not sure if that’s made it to Vietnam, but I’m always going to raise an eyebrow with co ferments these days. Not that they can’t be tasty, but they shouldn’t command a price premium if it’s essentially just flavored coffee in my view.
Yes, co-fermented coffee tends to be lower quality coffee that is co-fermented with flavouring juice to cover the lack of quality. That's not the case of all co-ferments but it's a significant enough number of them that it's usually something to avoid unless you really trust the roaster and farm.
Any co fermented coffee I've had in Vietnam has been anaerobic fermented with something else like strawberry.
If your Vietnamese coffee is co fermented with “strawberry” and actually tastes like strawberry, it’s essentially just using flavoring, not real strawberry (or, not only real strawberry).
I was just in Hanoi! A thing I learned is that Vietnam is today the second largest producer and exporter of coffee, behind Brazil of course. And per capita, Vietnam produces and exports more than Brazil.
And as for taste - I love the rough and tough flavours of Vietnamese Robusta coffees! The Australian roasted Arabicas are mild and gentle, almost to the point of blandness in comparison.
The 1977 GDR coffee dilemma is wellknown. Everyone had a different name for the cheap fake coffee then. Even in West Germany the prizes made people try the fake one.
But what is not wellknown to me, why both parties forbid cross partnerships, where they agreed to a longterm economic partnership.
> West Germany attempted to isolate East Germany with the so-called Hallstein Doctrine, which amounted to a pretty solid trade embargo.
The first sentence is true, and is what I know. The second economical leg of this sentence is new to me.
Basically, Hallstein Doctrine was what "One China" politics is. The BRD assume that is is the sole legitimate (since democratically elected) government. For example, someone from east germany fleeing to west german already had the (west) germanship citizenship, no paperwork needed to get it.
However, Hallstein doctrine had --- to the best knowledge ... very unspecified reactions. Germany e.g. stop diplomatic relationships with Cuba. But not economical ties, I know that my father continued to smoke Havanna cigars (eeeek!). They stopped diplomatic ties with Yugoslavia ... but all the Winnetou Films were recorded there, and it even became a holiday destination for west germans. Also all payments continued, it was not an economical embargo.
In the case of Egypt it could be seen like that. When Egypt accepted the state-hood of east-germany, then West-Germany broke it's diplomatic ties AND stopped its economical aid. I'm not aware of it stopping buying oil from Egypt, thought.
Fan fact: there is also two inverses of the Hallstein doctrine. The first one is the Ulbricht Doctrine. That doctrine mandated that socialist countries mustn't normalize their diplimatic ties to west-germany until it recognized east-germany.
And the second inverse is that other countries only saw west-germany as the legal succession of the 3rd Reich and even the german empire. So it was West-Germany had hat to fulfill contracts of that time. Except for the reparations. The USSR took (or stole) more stuff from East Germany than the western allied forces took from West Germany. About 30% of the industrial infrastructure was removed, e.g. 11800 km of railway tracks. And even after they stopped removing the infrastructure itself, they still demanded a percentage of the production.
GDR - german democratic republic
A fun read. It's interesting to think about the trade limitations imposed on East Germany and how those impacted daily things we take for granted.
The article never defines GDR, but I looked it up in case you were also unfamiliar:
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), commonly known as East Germany, was a socialist state in Central Europe that existed from October 7, 1949, to October 3, 1990
The German acronym (DDR) is much better known among Eastern Europeans. My parents (Czech) would almost never call it East Germany.
East German here. I have never met East Germans who called their home country Ostdeutschland before the Wende; that was very much a West German thing, and even then not as widespread as one might think (i. e. "DDR" was the much more common name amongst them). After the Wende it became (more of) a thing for Easterners as well, especially in context with the identity: Ostdeutsche(r).
Bulgarian here - for me DDR/GDR is well known. Also FRG.
Romanian here, the same applied here on all counts. Back in the '80s and going into the '90s we also used to name an infamous and poor Bucharest area as RFG (FRG in English), which was the capital letters of those three neighborhoods taken together as an acronym.
In West-Germany we used a plethora of names:
* "SBZ" -> Sowjetisch besetzte Zone -> sowjet occupied zone
* "Ost-Zone"
* "DDR"
* "Ost-Deutschland"
Almost no one spelled out "DDR" with "Deutsche Demokratische Republik", since that was a lie. There was little democracy there.
People that fled from east-germany early (e.g. before the wall) usually used "SBZ "or "Zone". And it was usually meant in a derogatory sense. "DDR" was more neutral, although few people in west-germany had a neutral view on the eastern regime.
Fun thing: some people here in Germany act like there is no East Germany. For them it is "Middle Germany". As if we still had Schlesien and Pommern ...
Look at radio stations. We have SWR: Süd-West Rundfunk (south west) in Baden-Württemberg and Rheinland-Pfalz. We have WDR: Westdeutscher Rundfunk (west) in Nordrhein-Westfalen. We have NDR: Norddeutscher Rundfunk (north). In Niedersachsen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Hamburg (not Bremen).
... and then we have Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (middle) in Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Thüringen.
And no one is in the east ...
don't forget Königsberg, next east german state after russian defeat in 2027
I've driven motorbikes through Dak Lak a few times. Really beautiful area. Just south of there is Da Lat and close by, there is one tiny coffeeshop run by some kids that live there that was my favorite... https://maps.app.goo.gl/PPy3c3T1oreRrDDR6
One aspect of the story that is glossed over here is that there were very few Vietnamese people in Dak Lak prior to 1975. The OP is a story of forced displacement against the Ede and Mnong people.
What an interesting slice of history.
Coffee with Chicory? Tres Frenchy. Coffee with Chicory, Oats, and christ knows what? Not chic.