Architectural Digest

International Coffee Day 2021

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This International Coffee Day, we look at how Indian coffee brands are making coffee go arty.

The Indian coffee story has been seeing action from its inception. It started in 1600 AD when Saint Baba Budan planted seven seeds that he smuggled from Yemen at Karnataka’s Baba Budangiri hills. Commercial plantations started in the 18th century during British rule.

Coffee estate in Sakleshpur
Coffee estate in Sakleshpur

India has seen a coffee explosion from the time the first coffee café was launched in 1996 by the indigenous brand Coffee Day. While that started the interest in coffee, with its acclaimed tagline “a lot can happen over coffee”, innovative coffees that are processed in unique ways by the farmer on his farm, to highlight the intrinsic genetic nuances of a varietal, where beans are roasted with great care, most often by the artisanal cafes themselves to develop and bring to the forefront those precise sparkling notes are now seeing increased interest.

Coffee beans post processing
Coffee beans post processing

Shaheed, Director – Research, Dharthi an NGO, working on environment, forests, communities and tourism avers, “quality of coffee is no doubt key to a coffee planter and those with larger plantations want to get the best of price for the beans they harvest. A good number of the larger planters are networked through the London market, from where they channelise coffee to other countries.  It is here when coffee gets to the domain of artisan coffee and commands a premium and the coffee planters are willing to experiment and do something different.”

Science has taken over the cup of coffee. “And this needs to be understood and followed, to ensure that the human body not only reaps the health benefits of the coffee bean, but also enjoys a perfect cup of coffee, which has been brewed keeping in mind the scientific principles of cultivation, of processing, of roasting, of brewing and of even serving a cup of coffee,” says Sunalini Menon, President, Coffeelab Limited, Bangalore and Asia’s first woman professional in the field of coffee tasting.

Read the full story on how home grown brands are making coffee attractive in this story in Architectural Digest:

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