OUR STORY

Rooted in Yunnan

Nine Terraces started in the place its founders come from. Coffee has grown there for a century, but most people who drink it have never heard the name. We built the brand to close that gap, one cup at a time.

WHERE IT BEGAN

Good in Yunnan. Hard to find in America

For years the founder had been drinking good coffee on every trip home to Yunnan. Clean, sweet, layered coffee, roasted in the province, sold by people who had never printed a label. Then she would fly back to Boston, where coffee like this was hard to find.

In 2025 a trip home ended at a small estate in Menglian and a roastery in Kunming. The estate had been growing and processing coffee for years. Its roaster had worked the same beans for more than two decades. Neither had ever been advertised. The coffee sold the way good things sell in a small place: someone tasted it, told a friend, and the friend came back for more.

This time the cup was not just good. It was the answer. The coffee was already there; what it lacked was a name, a label and a way out of the province. She invested in the estate, and Nine Terraces was built around it. The estate, the processing and the roaster stayed exactly where they were. We sell the same coffee in China and in the United States.

WHY NINE TERRACES

Terraces, counted from the bottom

Yunnan coffee grows on hillsides cut into steps. Every step sits at a different elevation. Nights cool differently, fruit ripens at a different pace, and the coffee changes with it.

Our work is to put each coffee back on the step it came from.

1,300 m FIRST TERRACE

1,400 m TEA HOUSE

1,600 m AMBER TRAIL · LATE SUN · PURPLE DEW

1,700 m+ HIGH ESTATE · 23°N

Higher does not mean better. Each elevation changes the conditions, and the coffee with them.

BEFORE COFFEE, THERE WAS TEA

Coffee came later. The knowledge was already here

Yunnan had tea long before it had coffee. In Pu’er, families already understood what shade, drying and time could do to an agricultural product.

When coffee became part of the landscape, that knowledge did not disappear. It carried forward into the way a different crop was handled, observed and refined.

WHO WE ARE

One estate

The estate is the source.

Most of our coffee is grown and processed there, lot by lot, and we buy from neighbouring growers when a lot earns its place.

23°N comes from one marked plot on the estate. Tea House comes from Pu’er, where the family that grows it was in tea before it was in coffee.

One roaster

Our roaster has worked with Yunnan beans for more than twenty years.

She roasts in small batches and adjusts the profile to the harvest rather than to a fixed recipe.

Every bag we sell, in China or in the United States, is roasted by her in Kunming, rested, then shipped. It costs more and takes longer than roasting near the customer. We do it because nobody knows these beans better, and because the roast is part of the origin.

Two markets

Nine Terraces runs from two places.

Growing, processing and roasting stay in Yunnan, at our estate in Menglian and our roastery in Kunming. The brand, the cupping table and the US side of the business sit in Boston.

The coffee sells in both countries; the Chinese customers found it first, by word of mouth, before it had a name.

HOW WE WORK

Close enough to keep the context

We stay close to where the coffee is grown, processed and roasted, so what shaped the cup does not disappear along the way.

GROW

Our estate, and the neighbours'

Most of our coffee comes from our own estate in Menglian. We also buy from growers nearby when a lot earns its place. Elevation, harvest and place stay visible from the beginning.

PROCESS

Keep the decisions visible

Washed, honey, natural, shade-dried, cold-fermented. Fermentation, drying and handling leave their own mark on the cup, and we say which is which.

ROAST

Coffee from Yunnan. Roasted in Yunnan.

One roaster, small batches, roasted to the lot. Nothing is roasted outside the province.

SHARE

Bring the context forward

We taste every coffee before it ships, write down what we find, and brew it the way we ask you to.

WHY WE EXIST

To make Yunnan something you know by taste

Specialty coffee has taught people to recognize places through the cup. Ethiopia, Colombia, Kenya and Panama have become more than names on a label because drinkers learned what those origins could taste like.

We believe Yunnan deserves the same opportunity, not because it should imitate any of them, but because it has a character of its own.

We want more people to taste Yunnan, not just hear about it.

THE FOUNDER

From Yunnan to Boston, by way of a cupping table

The founder of Nine Terraces grew up in southern Yunnan, in a family from Puʼer. She came to the United States for graduate school and spent the next decade in luxury fashion and retail, learning how people decide what they value and how trust is built one conversation at a time.

Coffee came through the palate, on trips home. For years she had been drinking Yunnan coffee in Yunnan that she could not find in Boston. In 2025 she found the estate in Menglian and invested in it. Then she went back to school for the coffee itself: SCA Sensory Skills in 2026, with the Q Grader exam next. She has tasted every lot since, and the brandʼs tasting notes, recipes and the Find Your Coffee guide are all written from her cupping table in Boston.

“Yunnan does not need a better story. It needs more people to taste it.ˮ

FOUNDER · NINE TERRACES

IN THEIR WORDS

“Time moves quickly in our home.”

Between work, B-School, three kids, and whatever we are running to next, coffee is one of the few routines I genuinely look forward to slowing down for. Nine Terraces has found a really cool place in that rhythm. My favorite morning right now is opening a bag of Crossings, grinding the beans, and letting our Aiden take it from there.

On the weekends, we’ve gotten hooked on the single-serve pour overs. Preheat the kettle, open one up, and you have a great cup before we’re out the door for the next kid event. Amber Trail has been our favorite so far.

For a house where time is always moving, Nine Terraces has made really good coffee surprisingly easy to fit into it.

Luke & Claire P. Connecticut

“I didn’t think I’d care this much about coffee in a little pouch.”

I’m usually the person who wants good coffee but doesn’t want to turn making it into a project. That’s why the single-Serve Pour Overs surprised me.

The first one I tried was on a morning when I was already running late. I tore it open, hooked it over my mug, poured hot water through it, and a few minutes later I had coffee that tasted like someone had actually taken their time making it.

Now I keep a few at home, a few at work, and somehow they always disappear faster than I expect. My favorite part is trying a different one each time. Some are bright and fruity, some are sweeter, some I honestly can’t describe very well. I just know which ones I want another cup of.

It’s become my version of good coffee without having to plan for good coffee.

Rebecca New York