This is the second coffee we have bought from Mooleh Manay Coffee Estate in India this year and it's a very special one! Just like the Robusta coffees that you can find in our product range as a permanent item, Excelsa is a third separate coffee species giving us a completely different flavour profile from either Arabica or Robusta coffees. It is a low caffeine species, containing only about half as much caffeine as Arabica and a quarter of the caffeine most Robustas bring to the cup. It has a low acidity and an very elevated sweetness which in combination makes for a coffee unlike any you will have tasted before. Our tasting notes for this coffee are cherry, water melon and Crème Brûlée and we are not even kidding!
 
We are buying this coffee from Komal Sable and Akshay Dashrath of South India Coffee Co. via our friends from This Side Up Coffee (NL). After living, studying and working in the UK for a number of years, the couple decided to return to India to take over Mooleh Manay Coffee Estate which has been in Akshay's family for 5 generations. They have made it their mission to push the envelope in coffee species research aiming to make coffee in their area more resilient in the face of climate change and discover ways of making it even tastier along the way. In working with other farmers and farmer groups in their region of India, they strive to create economic sustainability for farmers while supporting them with training, know how an other inputs to ensure environmental sustainability at the same time.
 
On their own estate at Mooleh Manay, Komal and Akshay conduct studies involving different species of coffee like Arabica, Canephora (Robusta) and Excelsa as well as little known native Indian coffee species to explore their potential for adaptation strategies to climate change in their region. They also experiment with different processing techniques to achieve the best quality in their coffees and create unique flavour profiles and have a strong focus on soil health and regenerative cultivation practices.