Twenty families in Gor Village grew this lot, and until fairly recently none of them had a buyer. Coffee was planted around Xam Neua roughly two decades ago and produced almost no income. The district is tucked into a remote corner of northeastern Laos, far enough off the map that season after season passed without anyone in the trade knowing the farms existed at all. That changed in 2015, when exploratory trips into Houaphan turned up these 'forgotten coffee' farms and permanent buying and processing infrastructure followed. Lots like this one are the first time coffee from these villages has reached the world market.

Gor Village sits at 1,000 meters at 20 degrees north — high latitude for coffee, which does some of the work elevation normally does. Ripe cherry is bought directly from the farmers and paid out in cash on delivery once unripes are sorted, which is a meaningful thing in a place where the alternative for most of the last twenty years was no sale at all. The dry mill is in Gor Village itself; cherry travels to the wet mill in Nala Village, in neighboring Xamtai District, for processing.

The process here is straightforward and clean: cherry is pulped, then fermented submerged in a sealed container, washed off once fermentation hits its mark, and dried on raised beds over about fourteen days. No tricks — this is the lot that shows you what Houaphan tastes like with nothing layered on top of it.