India

Indian coffee has a 400-year history — the legend says Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee seeds out of Mocha and planted them on a hillside in what's now Karnataka in the 1670s. That foundation became the core of Indian coffee production, which today centers on Karnataka (by far the largest state, about 70% of national volume), Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in the country's south.

India grows roughly half arabica and half robusta. Arabica plantings are at higher elevations on the Western Ghats; robusta covers the lower slopes. Much of Indian coffee is grown under dense forest canopy — true shade-grown, with pepper and cardamom vines climbing the shade trees — which gives Indian coffee its distinctive herbal, spicy, almost forest-floor character. Very few other origins grow coffee this deeply in shade anymore.

The most distinctive Indian product is Monsooned Malabar. Historically, coffee shipped from India to Europe by sailing ship spent months at sea in humid holds, and by the time it arrived, the beans had absorbed moisture, changed color to a pale yellow-gold, and developed a unique mellow, low-acid, nutty flavor. When faster steamships eliminated the long sea voyage, Italian espresso roasters missed the flavor and Indian exporters learned to reproduce it on land: beans are stored in open-sided warehouses on the Malabar coast during monsoon season, deliberately exposed to humid winds for 12-16 weeks. The resulting cup is pale, heavy-bodied, low-acid, nutty, and a signature component of traditional Italian espresso blends.

Non-monsooned Indian coffee (sometimes labeled "plantation" for washed arabica) has a gentler, more conventional specialty profile — cocoa, nuts, mild spice, soft citrus, medium body. Karnataka's Baba Budan Giri and Kerala's Wayanad region produce some lovely washed lots at specialty grade. But the monsooned Malabar remains the product Indian coffee is best known for globally.