First light through an avenue of tall trees on the estate road, mist still lying between the trunks

Baba Budan Giri · Chikmagalur · Coorg · BR Hills

From First Light

Two estates in Karnataka, four hundred metres apart in the sky, living the same day. This is where the coffee begins — long before it is coffee.

The Estates of Berunda

Chapter One

The Land Decides

No roaster can put flavour into a bean. A roaster can only reveal what the land has already put there.

Sunrise over layered forest ridges in Coorg, valleys still holding mist — CoorgThe Western Ghats at dawn — the same range that has grown coffee in India since the seventeenth century.

Both estates grow their coffee inside a forest, not in place of one. Unlike the great plantations of Brazil, there are no monoculture blocks here — no clean rectangles of a single crop. The coffee grows beneath native shade trees that were standing long before it arrived, alongside bees, birds and, in Coorg, elephants.

It is a slower way to farm. Shade delays ripening, and delayed ripening is what allows sugars to develop in the cherry. Everything that makes this coffee worth drinking is, in some form, a consequence of taking longer.

Shade: Grown under native canopy on both estates, continuous with the surrounding forest.
Soil: Deep lateritic and red loam in Coorg, iron-rich and moderately acidic; loam fed by natural springs in BR Hills.
Water: Around a hundred inches of rain a year in BR Hills, and natural springs running through the property.
Weeding: Done by hand, and the weeds go back into the ground as manure. Nothing is sprayed off, nothing is carted away.
Neighbours: In Coorg: elephants, tigers, rabbits, butterflies, birds, and cobras, rat snakes, pythons and Russell’s vipers.

Ripe red coffee cherries clustered along a branch in the shade of the canopy at BR Hills — BR HillsCherries ripen unevenly under shade. This is a feature, not a problem.

An estate story

There is a snake that walks the estate the same way every time, as if checking on it. Locally, it’s known as the area manager.

Chapter Two

Two Estates,
One Morning

One sits on a forest shelf at nine hundred metres. The other begins three hundred metres above it. They will never taste the same, and they are not supposed to.

Aerial view of the Coorg estate — a red drying yard set in an unbroken sea of forest canopy

Estate One

Victory Estate

Athur, Pollibetta · Coorg, Karnataka

Seven generations of the same family have worked this ground, and some of the trees on it have been bearing fruit for two hundred and eighty-four years. The estate lies on an elevated shelf rather than cut terraces — no stairs, no stepped blocks — so the whole plantation drains and breathes as one piece of land. It is run today by a seventh-generation, female-led house.

Elevation: 2,900 ft
Generations: Seven
Oldest trees: 284 years
Soil: Lateritic & red loam
Species: Arabica & Robusta
Processing: Sun-dried
Roast: Medium-dark

Shade-grown coffee rows climbing a misty slope at BR Hills, a single picker in orange among the bushes

Estate Two

Karadykan Estate

BR Hills, Karnataka

Higher, cooler and wetter. Karadykan climbs from twelve hundred metres, takes a hundred inches of rain a year and drinks from natural springs that run through the property. Third-generation planters Mr S. Appadurai and Mrs Hamsini Appadurai farm it regeneratively — the land is expected to be in better condition in fifty years than it is today. Community, quality and sustainability are the three values the family names for itself.

Elevation: 1,200 – 1,320 m
Generations: Three
Rainfall: ~100 in a year
Soil: Loam, spring-fed
Species: Arabica
Farming: Regenerative
Roast: Medium-Light

Chapter Three

The Hands

A woman on the BR Hills estate greeting the camera with folded hands, coffee bushes behind her — BR HillsSelective hand picking. There is no machine anywhere in this part of the process.

Every cherry on both estates is chosen by hand, and only once it is ready. A picker will return to the same branch four or five times across a season — so that nothing unripe ever reaches the yard.

A picker reaching into a coffee bush heavy with ripe red cherries at BR Hills — BR HillsRipe only.

An older picker in a headscarf working a branch of coffee cherries in Coorg — CoorgEvery branch is read by eye before a hand touches it.

The people are not incidental to the quality — they are the quality. Workers on both estates are paid directly. On the Coorg estate, packaging for larger orders is made by partner NGO communities — transgender people, visually impaired people, wheelchair users — who are commissioned and paid as suppliers, not as a gesture. Those communities come in around twice a month, for the larger orders, and only trusted organisations are worked with. The owner’s two sisters run NGOs of their own, and the family supports the education of the people in them.

Nothing leaves either estate as waste. Weeds return as manure, and the forest is left where it stands.

Who runs Coorg

A female-led business, seven generations in. She worked her way up to build the coffee business out of her own estate, breaking stereotypes and defying odds along the way. She is a single mother.

A group from the Coorg estate sitting together outside at the end of a working day — CoorgSeven generations in, the estate is still a place people come back to.

Chapter Four

Sun & Fire

By midday the shade is gone. Everything picked that morning is spread on open ground and turned, by hand, until the sun has taken exactly enough out of it.

Sun-drying is the slowest method available and the only one that leaves everything inside the bean. Mechanical drying is faster and costs the coffee its nutrients — so it is not used. In Coorg the cherries dry whole; at Karadykan they are also honey-processed and washed, which is what separates Gajendra from Arjuna before either of them ever sees fire.

The Yards — drag or swipe

01 / 06

A worker raking a vast bed of drying coffee in the Coorg yard, sun flaring low across the surface — CoorgTurned by hand, several times a day, for as long as the sun holds.

Aerial view of the BR Hills drying yards — grids of coffee laid out on the ground, ringed by forest — BR HillsA season's picking, laid out in grids and read like a ledger.

A woman spreading freshly picked red cherries evenly across the drying floor at BR Hills — BR HillsSpread thin, or it will ferment.

Close view of honey-processed coffee drying in its parchment at BR Hills — BR HillsHoney sun-dried — the fruit left on, deliberately.

A worker drawing a rake through drying cherries in Coorg, his shadow long across the yard — CoorgThe same pass, again and again, until the moisture is right.

Two figures walking through the Coorg drying yard as the sun drops behind the trees — CoorgThe yard is covered before dusk, and opened again at first light.

Chapter Four, continued

Then, Fire

Traditional manual drums. Controlled by hand from the first step to the last, with no outside party permitted anywhere in the process.

Roasting is where the acidity is decided, and it is decided by judgement rather than a program — which is why no two roasts here are identical. Coorg is taken to medium-dark, the register that suits its Arabica and Robusta. Karadykan is held to a medium-light roast, so the altitude stays audible in the cup.

Farming, milling, roasting, packing — one vertically integrated house, deep care taken at every step, no part of it handed to someone else.

Pure coffee. No chicory, ever — not to cut cost, not to bulk out a blend. What is in the bag is what came off the estate.

“A dance between the roaster, the machine and the coffee.”
How the house describes its own craft

Looking down into a traditional manual roasting drum in Coorg, beans turning in amber light — CoorgThe drum, mid-roast. Everything from here is timing and nerve.

Chapter Five

The Cup

Three coffees. Each one is a place before it is a product.

From Coorg · Victory Estate

Dhrona

Arabica & Robusta, sun-dried

HarvestSelective hand pickingProcessingSun-driedRoastMedium-dark

From BR Hills · Karadykan Estate

Gajendra

Arabica, honey sun-dried

VarietalSLN 9ProcessingHoney sun-driedRoastMedium-Light

Arjuna

Arabica, washed

VarietalChandragiriProcessingWashedRoastMedium-Light

Two estates, one day, and a great many hands — all of it still in the cup. That is the entire point of doing it this way.

Enter the Collection