How India discovered coffee

Among the fruits and beverages registered at Chennai, a small number trace their inception to the colonial period. Mahabaleshwar was the perfect summer getaway for the administrators residing in Bombay Province. Located in the Sahyadri mountain ranges on the Western Ghats this plateau is never too hot because of altitude and never too cold because of the tempering influence of the warm winds from the Arabian Sea. Inspired by the ecology, British officers introduced the cultivation of strawberry at Mahabaleshwar in 1920.

Mahabaleshwar strawberries attained the status of Geographical Indications in 2010.

Inspired by the British, Shree Ramrao Jairamji Gaikwad almost ushered in a grape revolution in early 1925 at Ojhar, a small town lying 20km to the north-east of Nashik. The bunches of bold, fleshy and elongated berries of the Nashik grapes were labelled with the Geographical Indications tag in 2010.

But the finest example of British investment with a place is in the plantations of coffee and tea. Coffee it is said was introduced into India by a saint called Baba Budan in 1670 CE. On his pilgrimage to Mecca he travelled through the seaport of Mocha, Yemen, where he discovered coffee. To introduce its taste to India, he wrapped seven coffee beans around his belly and got them out of Arabia. He planted the beans in the hills of Chikmagalur located in the foothills of the Western Ghats, which in his honour are named Baba Budan hills.

In the 1850s, the British decided to clear acres of forest in the Western Ghats and set up coffee plantations. A region specially suited was Malabar. Lying between the southern Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, Malabar was a part of the British-controlled Madras Province.

From this region, the ships on sail took six months for the unwashed cherry coffee to reach Europe. During this transit, the coffee in the damp hold of ships was exposed to sea winds saturated with high humidity. This exposure allowed the coffee to acquire a special vintage flavour which was opened in 1869, the time taken to travel 7,000km from India to Europe was reduced from six months to a journey of one month. This shortened time of sea travel affected the taste of coffee.

European consumers complained that they missed the distinctive flavour of musty age in the unwashed Indian coffee. To recreate the special taste, the producers and exporters of coffee in India invented the method wherein they spread the coffee beans out in open trays to allow the latter to absorb the moisture and thus "monsoon" the coffee.

The region thus became famous for the Monsooned Malabar Arabica Coffee and Monsooned Malabar Robusta Coffee, both of which earned the status of Geographical Indications in 2008. More than coffee, it was tea which held the imagination of the British.

(Courtesy of Mail Today and reprinted after publisher's permission.)