Origin of the Month
Some coffees you can get back to. Others you only get once.
Origin of the Month october 2026
india monsoon malabar AA 2026
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Some coffees are interesting because of where they grow. Some because of the varietal. Some because of the way they are processed… and then there is Monsooned Malabar.
We last featured a Monsooned Malabar as our Origin of the Month in July 2023. It is still one of the most unusual coffees we roast—not because someone recently invented an exotic new
processing method, but because coffee producers in India intentionally recreate something that first happened by accident hundreds of years ago.
Before the Suez Canal opened in 1869, coffee traveling from India to Europe made the long voyage around the southern tip of Africa aboard wooden sailing ships. The trip could take months. During that journey, the raw coffee was exposed to humid, salty ocean air.
Something happened to the beans along the way. They swelled. Their fresh green color faded toward pale yellow and gold. Their acidity softened dramatically. And the coffee developed a heavy, mellow character unlike the coffee that had originally left India. European coffee drinkers liked it a lot.
Eventually ships became faster, transportation improved, and coffee no longer spent months being slowly altered at sea. But customers still wanted the flavor they had come to associate with
Indian coffee. So producers figured out how to reproduce it intentionally.
Today, selected dry-processed coffee is taken to curing facilities along the west coast of southern India during the southwest monsoon season. The coffee is spread in open, well-ventilated warehouses where humid monsoon air can circulate around it. It is raked frequently, loosely packed into bags, stacked with room for
airflow, and repeatedly repacked to encourage even exposure.
Over roughly 12 to 16 weeks, the beans absorb moisture from the atmosphere, swell dramatically—sometimes to nearly twice their original size—and change to the distinctive pale yellow or straw color associated with Monsooned Malabar.
The process also changes the cup. Bright acidity drops away. Body becomes heavier. Chocolate, grain, spice, earth and toasted
flavors move forward. But this year’s coffee gives us another reason to talk about what is in the bag.
The varietals are Kent and Cauvery.
Kent is one of India’s historic Arabica selections. It was prized by Indian growers during the early twentieth century for both its cup quality and its relative resistance to coffee leaf rust, and Kent genetics later became part of other important Indian coffee breeding programs.
Cauvery comes from a very different chapter in that same story. It is descended from a cross between Caturra and the Timor Hybrid, combining traditional Arabica genetics with the
disease resistance inherited through the Timor line. Put them together and this coffee contains two different generations of India’s long effort to grow excellent Arabica while dealing with one of coffee agriculture’s most persistent diseases.
Then India takes those beans and subjects them to one of the strangest post-harvest treatments in coffee. We love this stuff.
This particular lot comes from the Mysore and Coorg growing regions and gives us notes of graham cracker and baker’s chocolate.
The baker’s chocolate gives it that deep, dark cocoa character we expect from a good Monsooned Malabar, while the graham cracker brings in toasted grain and a mild sweetness. The acidity is restrained, the body is substantial, and the cup is smooth, rich and unmistakably different from a bright Central American or African coffee.
Origin of the Quarter Q4 2026
Honduras “Ruby”
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Organic Honduras Grasia Maria Penalba
(But we are calling it Honduran Ruby)
About the People
This organic microlot comes from Grasia María Peñalba and her parcel on the family farm, Finca La Perla Azul, in Marcala, Honduras. Grasia grew up within the coffee community surrounded by people within an organization called COMSA (Café Orgánico Marcala S.A.). COMSA sells both organic and conventional coffee, but its work extends well beyond coffee production.
The organization focuses heavily on sustainable agriculture, education, and community development, including an international school and agricultural training programs. At the center of much of that work is an idea called Finca Humana, or the Human Farm, the belief that a healthy farm depends not only on healthy soil and plants, but on healthy, educated, supported families and communities as well. The cooperative connects healthy soil and productive farms with education, family, community, and the development of the next generation.
Grasia is part of that next generation, and it is here she learned the organic farming practices she now uses on her own coffee. Her work at La Perla Azul is particularly interesting because she approaches harvesting with a tremendous amount of intention. Other documented lots from her farm have included selective picking, measurements of the sugar concentration in ripe coffee cherries using Brix readings, hand sorting, and flotation to remove damaged or lower-density fruit. Some harvests have even been timed around particular phases of the moon.
That level of attention gives us a pretty good idea of how seriously she takes what happens before the coffee ever leaves the farm.
About This Coffee
This coffee is an organic, fully washed microlot. Instead of Grasia’s coffee disappearing into a much larger regional selection, this coffee has been kept separate so we can trace it back to the individual producer who grew it.
This lot is washed, meaning the fruit surrounding the coffee seed is removed before the coffee is dried. Compared with natural or honey processing, washed coffees often allow the acidity, structure, and characteristics of the coffee itself to come through more clearly.
Normally, we share with you the varietal of coffee plant, but we can’t do that with this one. We can tell you that Grasia grows documented varietals at La Perla Azul, including Catuai and Parainema, but we have not found reliable documentation identifying the varietal in this specific washed lot. Rather than guess, we would rather tell you what we actually know. Other lots from La Perla Azul have been specifically identified as Catuai or Parainema, which is exactly why we don’t want to assume this one is the same.
What to Expect in Your Cup
This is a bright, clean coffee with notes of Honeycrisp apple, cranberry, grapefruit, and lemongrass. The cranberry gives it a tart red-fruit character, the Honeycrisp apple amplifies it, and grapefruit brings a lively citrus acidity. The lemongrass is lighter and more aromatic, showing up as a clean, almost tea-like quality in the cup.
There is enough sweetness and body underneath all that brightness to keep the coffee balanced rather than sharp.
If most of the Honduran coffees you have tried tend toward chocolate, caramel, nuts, or heavier sweetness, pay attention to this one. It shows just how different two coffees from the same country can be when you change the producer, the farm, the processing, and all the decisions that happen along the way. In this case we know exactly whose decisions we are tasting.