Craigmore Estate | Natural Robusta

Craigmore Kattimuttu sits at nine hundred metres in Coorg, fifty-two acres of robusta grown under native shade with pepper and cardamom running between the rows. Farokh Anklesaria has been planting trees into it since 2017.

This is the straight version. No tank, no ferment, nothing clever. The cherries were laid out whole on raised beds and patio and left in the sun for two hundred and forty hours, until they came down to twelve per cent moisture, drying slowly enough for the fruit sugar to go into the bean rather than off into the air.

Caramel, chocolate, vanilla. It is the quieter of the two Craigmore lots and the better one to start with. The anoxic fermented lot is the same crop taken somewhere stranger.