Origin of the Month

 

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.