This is a guest post written by Pranoy Thipaiah of the Kerehaklu Estate in Chikmagalur, India, who produced the coffees released by Aviary as AVIARY#XX2 and AVIARY#016.

Coffee didn’t show up in India last decade, or the one before that, riding the recent wave of latte art and Aeropress championships. It came much, much earlier – on foot, in secret, across borders, oceans, and centuries. The story’s been sitting here for a while. We just haven’t been telling it loud enough.

Let’s begin with a familiar name: Baba Budan, a Sufi saint from Yemen, who, in the 17th Century, is said to have smuggled seven coffee seeds out of the Arabian Peninsula, apparently tucked away in his long beard. At the time, Yemen and its port city of Mocha, were protective of – what seemed to be – their coffee monopoly. Beans apparently weren’t allowed to leave the Arabian Peninsula – especially unroasted. But Baba Budan didn’t just break the rules – he rewrote the agricultural future of a subcontinent.

He planted those seeds on our misty slopes of Chikmagalur, now something of a holy site for Indian coffee. And here’s what’s easy to miss: this wasn’t just a symbolic act. It gave India a quiet head-start. Arabica may have become world-famous later through other parts of the world, but the Indian subcontinent was one of the first places it set down roots.

Sri Lanka had its moment too, receiving its first beans from Yemen at a similar time – before the notorious coffee leaf rust shifted the Ceylon estates’ focus towards tea. But India held on. Arabica settled in, and Robusta followed later – which of course has been valued more for its hardiness and disease-resistance than for anything it had to say in the cup. 

You could say Arabica was the gifted poet, Robusta the workhorse. Both waiting for their moments.

But here’s where it gets interesting. That early start – over 300 years ago now – has given Indian coffee trees time to evolve, hybridise, and quietly build unique genetic character. It matters. And I’ll tell you why.

Researchers at organisations like the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) in India have identified Indian cultivars with natural resistance to drought and disease, and flavour traits we’re only now beginning to fully understand. Take S9, for example – an amazing and versatile variety which has immense potential in the cup and in the field.

Deep roots and diverse genetics are starting to look like a real advantage in the age of climate unpredictability.

And while many still associate “great coffee” with volcanic soil or high-altitude Latin American farms, there’s a different story happening here. On Indian estates, coffee is often grown beneath an intricate canopy of jackfruit, arecanut, avocado, and citrus trees – each one adding something subtle (and somethings obvious) to our ecological niches. These aren’t decorative; the over-arching trees shape rainfall, pest-pressure, light, humidity, and soil life.

Especially the soil, in fact.

Much of India’s coffee is grown under decades, even centuries, of organic cover. Layers of fallen leaves, bark, decomposed fruit, and animal life create soils that are rich, nutritious, dark, and very much alive. 

This microbial activity doesn’t just help our plants grow – it has a role in fermentation too. On our own farm – Kerehaklu – we’ve been tapping into these local microbes to develop wild starter cultures – drawn from the flowers, fruits, leaves, the bark, the air itself – to kickstart wild fermentations during coffee processing. The flavour that emerges is unmistakably local, and impossible to replicate elsewhere.

And when we say shade-grown in India, we don’t mean a few scattered trees. The shade here is thick – often two or three tiers of canopy. It’s a kind of shade density you won’t find in many other coffee-growing regions anywhere in the world. Or any?

Increasingly, growers are leaning towards native species. Indigenous trees – especially the figs that are Keystone species in our lands – bring more than just biodiversity – they hold cultural memory, support wildlife, boost mycorrhizal networks, and nourish the soil without an over-dependence on synthetic inputs. 

It’s not an aesthetic choice. It’s a functional ecosystem.

Robusta, too, is starting to shed its old reputation. Like an old non-venomous rat snake, who you finally realise is actually no harm at all. For years, it was dismissed as commodity filler – cheap, bitter, forgettable. But that’s not the whole story. 

Grown with care, picked ripe, and processed with intent, Robusta can hold its own. We’ve started seeing cups with real character: notes of cacao, dark berries, port wine are some of many being slurped. The secret was never the variety – it was how it was treated.

Still, the world’s idea of Indian coffee has been stuck in an old frame. We’ve been seen as exporters of generic beans, the (in)famous monsooned lots, or the base of an instant blend. For a long time, we didn’t challenge that narrative. 

What also struck me – something we don’t talk about enough – is how advanced our Indian dry mills are. “Curing Works” as we call them here, are up there with some of the best in the world. When I visited farms and mills in East Africa, I was honestly surprised to find that the dry milling quality and efforts there didn’t always match what we’re quietly doing back home. 

Here, we have the ability to be specific – lot by lot, bag by bag – and treat the coffee with care, with the help of Brazilian and Japanese machinery. That wasn’t always the case in India, but that’s changed. And it could be one of our biggest trump cards in the years to come.

The Indian coffee supply chain was focused on volume, not quality.

Now, younger producer-processors with experimental mindsets, and small-scale collectives are approaching coffee differently. They’re treating each lot like a conversation – one that starts in our diverse soil and ends in the cups that are surprising people. 

Our Indian arabica varieties like S9, S10, Chandragiri, are hand-harvested at the right time, processed with precision, dried slowly to bring out nuance. We’re not just growing coffee anymore. We’re elevating it.

And maybe, just maybe, we’re on the edge of something. 

Because when you combine old genetics with living soil, dense shade, and careful processing, you start to uncover flavour that isn’t just good – it’s distinct.

India’s coffee story doesn’t need reinvention. It needs recognition. We just never stopped growing. We’ve been here all along. 

It doesn’t taste like Colombia or Kenya. 

It tastes like here.