Episode 1

Outside the business, it’s a little known fact that Vietnam has become a giant in the global coffee industry. In the past 15 years, Vietnam’s annual exports have rocketed, making the traditionally tea-drinking nation the second largest coffee exporter in the world after Brazil. The country’s coffee farmers are responsible for a quarter of all the instant coffee drunk around the world. This week’s Discovery follows the journey of the Vietnamese coffee bean from the highland plantations to processing plants of Ho Chi Minh City, and charts Vietnam’s meteoric rise in the global coffee business.

This programme is a co-production between the BBC World Service and ABC Radio National.