Hobson-Jobson, the 1886 Anglo-Indian lexicon explains ‘coffee’ as derived from the Arabic ‘kahwa’ (originally used to refer to wine). India’s connection is interesting: in south India, coffee was introduced by a Muslim pilgrim named Baba Budan. According to folklore, the pilgrim smuggled seven seeds out of Mecca (in the 17th century), and planted them on the Chandragiri hills (now named Bababudangiri in Chikmagalur, Karnataka). Today, coffee machines may be de rigeur at every office pantry, but the earliest adopters were south Indian households. Filter coffee was about brewing ground coffee beans using a traditional filter. Entrepreneurs from Udupi in Karnataka, who went on to set up Udupi restaurants in Mumbai, listed ‘strong filter coffee’ as a staple item. By the...
"People are appreciating the complexity of coffee," says Indianbean's boss Kunal Ross, adding that coffee has 1,250 taste notes compared to 350 in wine.
INDIAN BEAN WATAPI One of the Perfect Daily Grind team recently ventured to Mumbai and, as usual, I scoured the web & pestered contacts in search of a coffee shop to visit. I couldn’t find a single independent specialty coffee shop and began to feel that the terms “Third Wave” and “Specialty Coffee” hadn’t yet reached India. Surprising news, considering that India has a middle-class numbering around 50 million and is the world’s sixth largest coffee producer (of which 25% is Arabica). So when we discovered “The Indian Bean”, a web-store venture which sources, roasts & delivers (free of charge) single-estate specialty coffee to India’s coffee aficionados – we had to contact them. We emailed the founder, Kunal Ross, and it...
My childhood memories of family trips have vivid images of my grandmother stuffing her oversized trunk with various foodstuffs wrapped in bed sheets or towels. Whether it was apples from Kashmir or mustard from Kolkata, she loved regional produce.
Ditch those instant coffee packets. Three new websites are bringing gourmet coffee right to your doorstep. “Nearly 80 percent of India's coffee bean produce is exported every year, and finding good quality coffee is very difficult,” says Kunal Ross, a former hospitality and advertising professional and the man behind indianbean. com, the country’s first coffee delivery website. Ross, who launched the website in October last year, travelled across coffee plantations in south India before tying up with single estate plantations in Kodaikanal, in Tamil Nadu, and Coorg, in Karnataka. Single estate coffee, much like single malt whisky, is grown in one estate and has a distinct character. At present, Ross has three varieties in his portfolio: Appa’s from Coorg, Kodaikanal’s...
