India’s women power (Part 1)

She is so soft spoken you almost have to crane your neck towards her while she talks about her 50-year experience in coffee. She started tasting coffee in her teens. Who can beat that length of experience? It definitely tops my years in coffee. Her name is Sunalini Menon and I finally met her in her country, India. But Suna, as she likes to be called, and I met back in 2012 in Guatamela as we were both being inducted as founders of our country chapters of International Women Coffee Alliance (www.womenincoffee.org). Then, almost every year after, we would see each other in coffee shows in the US, speak at the same coffee panels and taste coffees from different parts of the world.

Finally, I caught her in Bangalore, just for a quick dinner as she was on her way to yet another farmers’ training the next day. Yes, she has been training farmers all over India and she also was a part of the Coffee Board of India, on quality control, research and development of new cultivars (cultivated varieties) that will suit India’s terroir. She shared with me that India’s relatively modest elevations for coffee need a different pest-resistant variety, as pests and diseases easily prey upon coffee at lower and warner elevations. With climate change, that problem has multiplied, needing more research on how to avert declining populations of coffee trees.

What I admire about Suna is her humility to even promote not Indian but Philippine Robusta coffee to her peers and the whole coffee community. She could easily promote her own coffee, yet she always mentions our Philippine Robusta as superior in taste. She said it again (without my prodding) at a panel where we both spoke in Portland, Oregon in 2023. I made her taste our Sulu Robusta and she would pass by and taste our Robustas at the SCA show each year.

Another coffee lady I met is Giraji Chandan, who makes powdered coffee for India’s market. Indian filter coffee, I found out on my recent trip, is popular as a traditional way of drinking coffee in the south of the subcontinent. They have equipment, which Giraji gave me a sample of, that produces a decoction of coffee. The “filter” – which is a cross between the modern Aeropress and a percolator – is made of metal (brass) and the coffee cups are also forged in silver or brass. You are served a cup (like an espresso cup) with frothy milky coffee and a deep dish. You can place some jaggery or brown sugar in the deep dish, pour the hot coffee mixture and aerate it while pouring. You transfer the hot coffee from one container to the other to air it and also cool it enough for one to drink it without getting scalded or burned.  Interesting way of making a very pleasant coffee concoction. The decoction step is the act of boiling coffee to extract the flavor and is said to be the oldest extraction method. After you mix it with milk and sugar, it is now a concoction.

Giraji gave me to take back home a brass coffee filter and packs of her powdered coffee. After receiving it, what are the odds that my next meeting before going to the aiport will be with Rati Mundrey, a past chapter chair of Ficci-FLO Bangalore, who then orders filter coffee. I follow suit as I thought it was their term for brewed coffee or drip coffee which I always prefer. What arrived were the cup and dish (called dabarah) for the filter coffee. It was meant to be – Rati teaching me how to do it, so I could use what Giraji had given me as a gift. As I poured from one container to cup and back to the dabarah container, I had to ask Rati, “When do I drink it?” She laughed as she said it was OK to drink it anytime now that it has cooled a bit and one can manage holding the metal cups.

These women who know coffee, roast coffee and drink coffee are just the tip of the iceberg of stories that I took home from India. I will need several articles to capture the Incredible India I have visited twice in six months! India’s domestic consumption of coffee is rising but we still beat them in per capita consumption. Now there are more cafés, coffee chains and coffee products coming from Mysore and other parts of Southern India. Why we cannot have Indian coffee beans so easily is the tariff structure between India and Philippines. Though they can help address our need for coffee, only ASEAN member-states are able to send us coffee with zero tariff. This is why Indonesia and Vietnam coffee are readily available in the country, but not Indian coffee. It can be slapped the same 40 percent duty as what we have to pay for Colombian or Ethiopian coffee.

We visited a relatively new coffee shop in Bangalore which has branches in India and Paris called Araku. This is where we had a coffee demo for two Indian coffee variants and where we met Giraji and her husband Chandan. He incidentally considers Sunalini as his mentor. That is how revered and respected our friend Sunalini is. And I was very happy to know that in a male-dominated industry like coffee, a male champion like Chandan considers a woman as his “guru” or teacher.

As I arrive from India I think about all the women I met over the last week in Mumbai and Bangalore. Coffee is just one of the ways we connect with our counterparts in India. The other connection is through cuisine. We spent many meals with our favorite breads and spices, and the women are always helpful in teaching us what to eat with what. A curious mind will open up a world of flavors, whether it’s food or coffee.