Four generations under pepper, cardamom and oranges.
A century-old family farm now in its fourth generation, growing S795 under the same mixed canopy of pepper, cardamom, oranges and bananas that has kept the family farming coffee through every price crash of the last hundred years.
Chikmagalur · Karnataka
It is October, and the cherry is ripening on the branch. Picking starts in November.
A typical year for this kind of country. This farm's own dates can run a few weeks either side.
Basankhan has grown coffee in Chikmagalur for more than a century and is now run by its fourth generation. The trees sit under a mixed shade canopy with black pepper, cardamom, oranges, lemons and bananas — a mix that matters commercially as much as ecologically: it is what lets a grower survive a bad coffee price without pulling out the coffee trees.
Cherries are selectively picked, pulped, washed and dried with care. The washed process keeps the fruit crisp and open, bright without turning sharp, with a rounded mouthfeel holding it in balance — green apple and muskmelon on filter, toffee and milk chocolate as espresso.
Picking follows the district pattern: blossom showers around March trigger flowering, backing showers a few weeks later set the fruit, and arabica comes off the trees from late November through January.
“Basankhan is the coffee we hand to anyone who says Indian arabica is one-note. It is the cleanest, most structured washed lot on our shelf — no rough edges, and the intercropped pepper and cardamom are exactly the kind of diversified farming we want to keep rewarding.”
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