The story
Timor-Leste Coffee Festival in Dili
The Timor-Leste Coffee Festival is an annual event in Dili organized by the Coffee Association of Timor, showcasing the country's highland-grown, largely organic coffee through a national quality competition, barista and roaster training, public tastings, and direct conversation with smallholder farmers from the mountainous interior.
Coffee arrived in Timor during the Portuguese colonial period and, over generations, became one of the territory's defining agricultural products, grown today largely by smallholder farming families scattered across the mountainous interior of the country, working small plots often at high altitude under shade trees, conditions that coffee professionals internationally have come to associate with distinctive flavor characteristics.