Because buying it at a store was far too efficient.
Coffee bushes are common on Nilgiris estates. They’re scattered among the tea, offering shade, keeping their own counsel. I had them on the property when I arrived and paid them little attention for the first year — there was too much else going on. Then the second year, we had a really good harvest. I don’t know exactly what aligned — the rains, the soil, the particular mood of that season — but the yield was significant enough that I thought: this time I’m going to try the full experience of home coffee processing and roasting… like do the whole thing. The whole thing.
So I did. (I watched a rather long and elaborate 2 part YT video (33 mins!!) and then completely ignored it of course. Later I discovered they had a shorter version here: David the Good. I probably would have ignored that too.
First, fermented the coffee fruit — the red cherries that most people never get to see because they only ever encounter coffee as a brown powder in a tin. Then sun-drying the beans, spread out in the Nilgiris sunshine, turning them, waiting. Then roasting — that’s the moment the whole house smelled like somewhere you’d queue outside on a cold morning. I would have just ground them up straight away, but in a perfect example of serendipity, my uncle Indiver was visiting India and standing at a Blue Tokai in Gurgaon where he happened to mention to the Barista that his niece was making her own coffee on a Nilgiri estate. During the chat, the Barista gave a tip to Indiver: Ask her to rest the beans for a few days after roasting. It allows the oils and flavours to get richer! So I did!! Then I ground them in batches.
Then a cup of coffee.
It was, and I want to be precise here, brilliant. Not “pretty good for something I made myself” brilliant. But really quite delicious.
I took small jars of it for colleagues in Singapore and Dubai. People who had sat through enough of my Teams calls to deserve something made by hand in the mountains. They really liked it. And that made me so very proud and happy!
The estate has a way of producing things you didn’t plan for. The coffee was one. The biscuits, it turns out, were another.
The coffee I just paid attention to, at the right moment.
Perhaps, sometimes that’s all it takes.
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Chom Chom Pantry · Kotagiri, Nilgiris
