Kavre

Bring it close and the first thing you get is floral, jammy, a little tropical, mango sitting right at the top, with something winey and fermented already there before you've even tasted it. Take a sip and that same fruit turns into berry jam, ripe plum, something close to port wine. It stays smooth and persistent, closing out on berry, juicy all the way through. The sweetness sits like fruit compote. The acidity is bright, carried by citric fruit. The body is juicy and wine-like, round in the mouth rather than sharp. There is a wine-like character running through the whole cup, with a boozy sensation sitting underneath the fruit.

Red Bourbon carries most of the weight in this cup. Round in body and naturally sweet, it forms the base for the jammy, compote-like character. Typica runs alongside it, bringing the floral lift and cleaner, more delicate fruit character found in the aroma. Caturra contributes to the brightness, keeping the dense fruit and wine-like body from becoming heavy. Grown between 1300 and 1500 masl in Kavrepalanchok, the slower ripening at altitude gives the cherries more time to build sugar before harvest, giving the 13-day fermentation plenty to work with.

Fully ripe red cherries were selectively handpicked, then sorted by hand, with underripe, overripe and insect-damaged cherries removed. A float in clean water then separated low-density fruit and foreign material. The cherries were placed into sealed tanks for 13 days of oxygen-limited fermentation. Temperature and conditions were monitored throughout, keeping the fermentation steady rather than allowing it to run uncontrolled. Once fermentation was complete, the cherries moved to raised beds and were dried slowly under shade with steady airflow, turned by hand through the day until they reached 10–12% moisture. The coffee was then rested, milled and sorted for export. Grown with organic fertilizers by smallholder farmers and cooperatives working across the terrace hills of the region.

There is no single estate behind this lot. It comes from smallholder farmers and cooperatives working across the terrace hills of Kavrepalanchok, using organic fertilizers and farming the land collectively. This is Shodh's first lot sourced from outside India. Not because it needed to come from somewhere else. Because, once cupped, it earned its place regardless of where it came from.

Thirteen days. That is where much of the character of this coffee begins. Anaerobic fermentation gives the ripe fruit time to develop into something deeper. In Kavre No. 01, that extended fermentation comes through as berry jam, ripe plum and port wine, with the wine-like depth and boozy character becoming part of the cup rather than simply sitting over it. The altitude plays its part too. At 1300–1500 masl, cooler conditions slow the ripening of the cherries, giving more time for sugars and flavour to develop. And underneath the processing and altitude is the farming itself: smallholder producers and cooperatives working the terrace hills of Kavrepalanchok. This is our first coffee from Nepal. Not an attempt to make the origin the story. The cup is.