India Ratnagiri Carbonic Maceration

Where in the world?

What’s the story?

Ratnagiri Estate is quickly establishing itself as one of the most progressive and innovative coffee producers in the world. This coffee takes what you’d expect from an Indian coffee, throws it out the window and replaces it with a funky fruit driven masterpiece of floral, citrus and complex berry flavours. 

On filter, the first sip lets you know this is not normal. Rose and gentle malic acidity give way to softer hawthorn berry sweetness, the body being simultaneously both light and viscous. There is also a delicate note of cardamom in the background, that harmonises beautifully with a clementine citrus acidity and muscat grape sweetness. It is indeed a multi layered marvel of a coffee.

On espresso, an initial hit of vanilla is quickly followed by soft, rounded clementine acidity that lingers for a long finish, accompanied by that gorgeous delicate rose note. 

I had the privilege of staying on Ratnagiri for a few nights, which was a fantastic experience and really helped to absorb the intricacies of both growing and processing coffees to this standard. Ashok Patre has been working immeasurably hard to identify and consistently produce coffees that completely flip the script on what can be expected from an Indian coffee. 

Ratnagiri’s processing all happens on the estate, so the cherries start their processing journey within hours of being picked. After being colour sorted by laser optics, the cherries are put through a bath of ozone and then straight into stainless steel tanks. Specific yeasts and bacteria from the farm are added to the tanks, and it’s here where the alchemy happens, when those microbes interact with the sugars from the coffee cherries.  

Enzymatic reactions create all that fruity fun potential, as the coffee cherries are then carefully hulled and dried on processing beds that are beneath polycarbonate panels to protect from the elements whilst also allowing sunlight through to gently dry the coffee and locking in all that flavour. 

India like other origins is facing great problems caused by climate change, the rains are unpredictable. So one way to protect the future of the estate is to produce a variety of micro lot coffees using scientific methods that maximise the potential flavours of the coffees from the farm. Ashok Patre from Ratnagiri has invested heavily in this vision, transporting tonnes of stainless steel equipment up narrow and bumpy forest roads, creating a fantastic processing facility on the farm, all to bring you the good stuff!! 

The coffee is grown in ancient forest foothills of mountains, triple shade that is carefully cultivated to allow just the right amount of sunlight and humidity. This allows coffee cherries to develop to their full potential, full of the flavanoids from the unique terroir. 

Visionary farmers are embracing the true potential of Indian specialty coffee, encouraging and incentivising seasonal pickers to select ripe red fruit that produces the sweetest coffee. This is then followed by post harvest processing that emphasises consistency and also embracing experimentation with newer processing methods that are drawing out more complex fruity characteristics of the coffees. 

This coffee is a fantastic example of taking the best of what the land has to offer, and innovation that takes it to the next level, and into the future.