Understanding India's Coffee Regions

Indian coffee grows in the shade

Almost all Indian coffee is grown under a canopy, interplanted with pepper, cardamom, silver oak and fruit trees. That shade slows the cherry down as it ripens and it is a large part of why Indian coffee so often reads as smooth and low in sharp acidity rather than bright and piercing.

It also means the estates we buy from are working farms with more than one crop, not coffee monocultures. When a lot arrives smelling faintly of spice, that is not marketing language — it is the neighbourhood the tree grew up in.

Karnataka: Chikmagalur and Coorg

Karnataka is where most of our coffee comes from, and it is where Indian coffee began. Chikmagalur tends to give us balanced, cocoa-leaning cups with a soft fruit note underneath. Coorg — Kodagu — often runs a little heavier and nuttier, which makes it a natural fit for milk drinks and for the darker end of our roasting.

Within a single estate, altitude and processing can shift a coffee more than the district name does. We taste lot by lot rather than buying by reputation.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu

Wayanad in Kerala is Robusta country, and good Indian Robusta deserves far more respect than it gets — dense, low in acidity, with a heavy sweetness that carries an espresso blend beautifully. The Nilgiris and the Shevaroy hills in Tamil Nadu bring a cleaner, more delicate Arabica profile that can be lovely brewed black.

Washed, natural and monsooned

How the cherry is processed after picking changes the cup as much as where it grew.

• Washed — fruit removed before drying. Cleaner, more transparent, easier to read as filter coffee.
• Natural — dried whole with the fruit on. Sweeter and heavier, with more obvious berry character.
• Monsooned Malabar — beans exposed to monsoon winds on the west coast until they swell and pale. Very low acidity, thick body, an unmistakably Indian style.

How we choose what to serve

We are a small café, so we would rather carry a short list we can talk about honestly than a long one we cannot. A coffee earns a place on our bar when it is good on its own and still good after it meets milk, because that is how most of Bangalore actually drinks it.

If we cannot describe why a coffee is on the menu, it should not be on the menu.