A Coorg morning

Estates in Kodagu are not planted in rows in the sun. Coffee grows in the shade of taller trees, and pepper vines climb those same trees — two crops on one piece of ground, neither of them hurried.

That shade is why the coffee here ripens slowly, and slow ripening is most of what people mean when they say a coffee tastes complex.

It also means harvest is done by hand, cherry by cherry, over weeks rather than days. There is no machine that can tell ripe from nearly-ripe on a hillside.

We buy from estates that still work this way. It costs more and there is less of it, which is the whole point.