Craigmore Estate | Anoxic Fermented 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 lot took the long way round. The cherries went into a sealed tank with the oxygen removed and fermented for forty-eight hours before drying began, in a polyhouse and then on raised beds and patio. Shutting out the air changes which microbes do the work on the fruit, and that changes what is left in the bean.

What comes back is not what most people expect from a robusta: cocoa powder, black cherry, almond. We buy the same crop from the same estate processed straight, with no tank stage, and the two taste nothing alike. That comparison is the whole reason both are on the shelf.