Origin : India
Producer : Various small tribal farmers
Process : Washed
Altitude : 1200masl
Cupping : Orange, lime, apple, and grapefruit over black tea and caramel.
Varietal : Sln5, sln795, Sln9
 
This is a bit of a favourite of mine and is the 3rd lot of coffee ive purchased from Araku this year. The growing conditions in India and specific processing methods create an interesting and unique taste profile. Certainly something very different to the usual suspects in the Northside line up. Pulping is done within 10 hours of harvesting with the coffee being washed, and fermented for 18 hours then dried in sun. Once dry, it was then rested for a long period of 180 days before dry milling and then exported.
 
From the importer
 
Coffee was introduced to Araku in the early 1900’s from neighbouring Pamuleru Valley, and in 2007, Small and Marginal Tribal Farmers Mutually Aided Cooperative Society (SAMTFMACS), a coffee farmer cooperative formed with assistance from The Naandi Foundation, was formed to push the coffee production there even further. It operates across seven mandals in the area – Araku, Hukumpeta, Dumbriguda, Anathagiri, Paderu, Pedhabaylu and Munchinpet – where the farmers have decentralised small and scattered plots averaging 1-2 acres per family. They are subsistence farmers, balancing cash crops such as pepper, turmeric, and ginger with coffee production.
 
A state-of-the-art Coffee Processing Unit was set up in Araku, fully equipped with latest machinery such as coffee pulpers. Naandi, in association with Araku Originals Private Limited (AOPL), a connected for-profit social enterprise, is also the first in the country to receive global accreditation as a Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) Premier Training Campus offering courses on green coffee, barista skills, brewing, and roasting, along with authorized SCA trainers.