Chikmagalur Arabica Coffee

Details

Arabica from a single estate on the Baba Budangiri slopes above Chikmagalur, grown between about 1,100 and 1,400 metres under a native canopy of rosewood and silver oak. Cherries are picked ripe, washed, dried on the patio and roasted to a medium roast in small lots, with the roast date on every pack rather than a packing date standing in for one. The cheat in Indian coffee is chicory. Roasted chicory root grinds to the same dark powder, costs a fraction of coffee, and dissolves away in the cup, and a coffee-chicory mixture is a perfectly legitimate product when the percentage is declared, which is exactly what a South Indian filter blend is. What is not legitimate is chicory in a pack sold as pure coffee, and it is the oldest substitution in the trade. Caffeine content settles it in a laboratory, because chicory carries none at all to contribute and will pull the figure below the arabica band, while robusta blended in will push it above. The same number therefore answers both questions at once. After that come roasted grain, date seed and tamarind seed powder, all cheap, all dark, all invisible once ground.

• No chicory, declared or undeclared, caffeine content tested per lot
• No robusta blended in, one hundred percent arabica
• No roasted grain, date seed or tamarind seed filler
• No added flavouring, caramel or colour
• Single estate, single harvest, roast date printed and not a packing date
• A medium roast, so it will not taste like the very dark bitter roast a filter drinker may be used to
• Ground coffee goes flat within about three weeks of opening, so buy the size you will finish rather than the size that looks like value