SPECIALTY COFFEE, BREWED IN INDIA

Café Coffee Day pioneered the café culture in India way back in the nineties. Decades later, the likes of Araku, Blue Tokai, and Subko are building a strong narrative around premium specialty coffee.

- AJITA SHASHIDHAR

WHEN MANOJ Kumar, CEO, Naandi Foundation (which owns specialty coffee brand Araku Coffee), met coffee experts in France and Italy 15 years ago with the claim that his coffee was among the best in the world, all he got was a deaf ear. How can a country, which has been, for centuries, exporting to the world mass grade robusta beans (which typically goes into instant coffee) even dare to call its coffee specialty, was the vibe. After all, specialty coffee was all about fine arabica beans, processed and roasted in small batches with unique flavour notes. It was sold at a 40-50% premium world over.

Kumar's claim that he produced the highest-quality arabica coffee, that too in the lesser-known Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh, sounded outlandish to coffee aficionados. But he was obsessed about his coffee and wouldn't give up—after a few meetings, he managed to convince roasters and green coffee bean buyers to visit Araku and see how they grew their coffee.

The Araku Coffee plantations, in the midst of thick forest cover, are completely rain-fed. At work are over 30,000 marginal tribal farmers who have an acre of land each. They grow coffee in shades; in filtered sunlight, the coffee cherries are hand-picked and sun-dried. Hand-picking cherries and sun-drying them is a rarity today (with coffee growers across the world embracing machines to harvest) but it is the perfect way for brewing a ‘clean cup’.