07 Chen Sheng-Le Coffee Estate (陳勝樂咖啡莊園)

Farm Story

Shin-she Village boasts an exceptional climate and geographical environment. The fertile soil and mild climate here are ideal for growing various fruit trees, with grapes, peaches, and loquats being local specialties. During harvest season, the orchards are bustling with visitors who can not only pick fresh fruits but also taste various delicacies made from local produce. In 1999, in Shin-she, Taichung, a fruit farmer planted the first coffee tree, and thus the story began.

Twenty-eight years ago, as their parents were aging, Chen Shengle and Xie Yueli returned home to assist with farm work. The family owned nearly two hectares of farmland, filled with grapes and peaches. Working alongside their parents, they learned a lot about agriculture, including orchard management and the use of farm machinery. During this time, they visited Gukeng with their production and marketing group, which sparked their interest in coffee cultivation. This marked the beginning of their coffee estate. Initially, the couple was unaware of the differences between coffee varieties and simply purchased seedlings from nearby farmers, planting them with naive enthusiasm.

At Chen Shengle’s Coffee Estate, everything from planting, harvesting, processing, and selling green beans to packaging roasted beans is personally overseen. Despite their main occupation as grape farmers, the Chen couple never abandoned their passion for coffee. Instead, they used their prior farming experience to optimize the quality of their coffee. Their estate is not large, but this allows them to provide more meticulous care, producing higher quality coffee. The estate also grows cape gooseberries and passion fruit, which are shared with friends and visitors, especially when coffee is not in season. In recent years, during spring and summer, they’ve tried planting pumpkins between coffee trees, allowing the vines to spread along the pathways. This, combined with cover cropping, helps control soil moisture loss by preventing direct sunlight on the ground.

As for the initial fifty seedlings, the Chen couple was initially unaware of their variety. It wasn’t until later, when coffee farmers, teachers, and researchers visited, that they learned their coffee was the SL34 variety of Arabica. Under the Chens’ management, the estate uses cover cropping to protect the soil. However, recognizing that this method isn’t perfect and can sometimes lead to pest problems, they also employ screen house cultivation to reduce these issues and stabilize yield and quality. Through decades of experience and expertise, the Chen couple has combined various elements to create an estate that is both environmentally friendly and diverse. Thanks to such careful cultivation, Chen Shengle’s Coffee Estate has been winning awards since 2008, starting with third place in Taichung County’s first coffee evaluation, followed by numerous top prizes and distinctions. In 2017, they won first place in the Zhongdu Coffee Overall Evaluation.

The story of the Chen couple is like a symphony: the sweet and sour grape prelude gives way to the rich coffee main theme, accompanied by the passion fruit and cape gooseberry, with pumpkin waiting for its cue as a decorative passage. This movement, filled with coffee and fruit aromas, resonates across the mountains of central Taiwan.