Raven's Brew founder Michael Beech travels to India on a constant quest for the world's finest coffees.

Imagine an exquisitely manicured British garden interjected onto the floor of a lush high-canopied jungle. You could be conjuring a typical Indian coffee estate. This is the almost virtual-world impression we received in our recent coffee pilgrimage to the fabulous coffee growing districts of Mysore, Coorg, Hassan, and Chikmagalur in India's heavenly southern state of Karnataka.
Below, Coffees growing in the shade of the forest canopy. In 2001, Michael Beech, founder of Raven's Brew, and John Gant of MasterRoaster were honored to travel to India as invited guests of the Coffee Board of India.
Michael and John consulted and conferred with members of the board, and spent two days cupping and writing cupping reports in cupping labs. Then they were graced all out of proportion with a 9 day tour of coffee and tea estates throughout a paradise called the Western Ghat Mountains.
Above, Sunalini Menon (2nd from right) and her Coffee Lab staff


This is the land of the wizards of coffee cultivation. It is the land of true, unqualified, shade grown coffee. 100 percent of India's coffee, arabica and robusta, is shade grown. The dozens of species of shade trees commonly found on coffee estates include rosewood, mahogany, teak, species of fig, sandalwood and cedar. These trees provide habitat to 70-80 species of birds and supply an average 10 tons per hectare of leaves and prunings for mulch.
Above, lucious ripe coffee cherries in a lush jungle setting. Agro-chemicals are used minimally in India. Much of Indian coffee is organic by default; there is a growing certified organic coffee industry. Feeding these worms (right) is an average 10 tons per hectare of leaves, etc. falling to the ground per year equaling 195 kilograms of nitrogen, 110 kg phosphorous, and 160 kg potash. Lagooning is mandatory along with many other water protection practices.
Above, ripe coffee cherries with pepper corns The coffee regions are also India's menagerie: wild elephant, boar, deer, monkeys, cobra, tigers, etc. were constantly evident. India's coffee regions are also spice worlds, where intercropping is common. Pepper vines, cardomom, ginger, chiles, jack fruit, betel nut, coconut, etc. are ubiquitous throughout the coffee plantations. Right, an Indian "beetle bucket" traps harmful stem boring beetles without using pesticides.

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Photos by Lezli Morgan and Michael Beech
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