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South India Coffee Company

Coffee research and supply. Following coffee from species development and cultivation through processing, trade, and the roasters we work with.

09/09/2026

Some fabulous clicks of a small visitor in the SICC Species Garden.

This appears to be a blue-striped nettle grub, Parasa lepida, a species of slug caterpillar found across South and Southeast Asia. Its pale green body, blue markings and orange-tipped spines make it easy to notice once you know where to look.

Those spines are defensive and can cause a painful sting or skin irritation, so this is one garden resident best observed without touching.

The caterpillar has been recorded on coffee and several other tropical plants. After its larval stage, it forms a cocoon and emerges as a small moth.

We found this one resting on a developing coffee cherry. A reminder that a coffee garden is never home to coffee alone. Every plant sits within a much larger living system, much of which reveals itself only when we slow down and look closely.

Photographed by pannaga_karumbaiah at the SICC Species Garden, Coorg.

06/09/2026

Robusta has long been positioned as coffee’s answer to a warming climate. The evidence suggests the story is more complicated.

Our new paper in Sustainable Development, led by Aaron Davis, Akshay Dashrath and Justin Moat, reviewed more than 50 studies alongside evidence from robusta’s indigenous ecology.

The takeaway: heat tolerance alone does not equal climate resilience.

Water availability matters. Where robusta is grown outside the environmental conditions that shaped the species, rising temperatures may increase its dependence on irrigation, changing how we need to think about its future in coffee production.

Sprudge takes a closer look at the research, the assumptions around robusta, and what the findings could mean for coffee in a changing climate.

Read the full Sprudge article , link in bio.

31/08/2026

The Sustainability of Robusta Coffee Under Global Change - Link in Bio

Robusta is increasingly positioned as coffee’s answer to a warming world.

But heat tolerance alone does not make a crop climate resilient.

Our latest research with Kew and collaborators looks beyond that assumption, examining where robusta evolved, its relationship with water, the inputs required to grow it outside its climatic niche, and what that means for its long-term sustainability.

The evidence asks us to rethink a widely repeated idea: is robusta really the climate-resilient future of coffee?

Robusta can grow at higher temperatures than Arabica, but the evidence points to something equally important: water.

In its indigenous range, robusta is associated with conditions that provide relatively consistent soil moisture through near year-round rainfall, terrestrial water sources such as groundwater and lateral water flow, or cooler, wetter microclimates.

Move robusta into landscapes where those conditions are absent, and that water often has to come from somewhere else: irrigation. The paper identifies substantial irrigation in major producing countries including India, Vietnam and Brazil where climatic suitability is limited.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply, “Can robusta take the heat?”

It is: “Does the landscape have the water to support it?”

Climate resilience is more than temperature tolerance.

What happens when we grow a crop outside the conditions it is naturally adapted to?

Often, we replace what the climate would have provided with inputs.

For robusta, that can mean substantial irrigation and fertiliser use with consequences for groundwater, energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Its relatively shallow feeder-root system makes access to soil moisture particularly important.

The question is therefore not simply can robusta grow here?

It is: what does it take to keep it growing here?

This research is not an argument against robusta.

It is an argument for growing coffee where species, climate and farming systems make ecological sense.

That means looking beyond a simple Arabica-versus-Robusta solution: restoring robusta production in climatically suitab

30/08/2026

Pannaga is brewing TCH today!

28/08/2026

PLOT ICON 69. Our coffee. Finally.

PLOT’s ICON series is where they put the rarest coffees they can find. Panama Geshas, auction lots, the sort of thing people build a whole career around. I’ve wanted us in it since roughly 2019.

So every harvest I’d send Matthew our best lots and ask. And every harvest Matthew would say no. Good coffees, he’d say. Not ICONS. I tried sending better coffee. I tried taking him to dinner. Genuinely one of the most stubborn men I’ve ever met.

Seven years of that.

This season he said yes. PLOT ICON 69. Four Strain Yeast. Our Chandragiri from Mooleh Manay, and the first Indian coffee ever to go into the series. For an origin most of the world still files under commodity and monsooned, that means a lot more to us than my ego does.

Here’s the part I didn’t want to write. Matthew was right every single time. Those earlier coffees weren’t ICONS. He never dropped the bar because we were friends, or because we’d worked together for years, or because I fed him.

PLOT didn’t give us an ICON. They waited until we made one. That’s the whole reason this one counts.

Thanks Matthew. Seven years of no was worth it.

Whole story’s on the journal if you want it. Link in bio.

Pannaga made the coffee. Komal built the company. The microorganisms did most of the actual work. I mostly asked Matthew.

23/08/2026

Michaela Tomchek spoke with us for Barista Magazine about SICC, Indian coffee, the species we are working with, and why we think there is still so much of this coffee landscape left to understand.

Thank you, Michaela and Barista Magazine, for taking the time to tell the story.

Coffee in India is deeply rooted in Karnataka, but the story is much broader than Arabica alone.

Robusta forms a significant part of what we grow, alongside a much wider diversity of Coffea that has historically received far less attention.

For us, understanding that diversity is an important part of understanding where Indian coffee can go next.

Long before we had genetic data, we had an observation passed down through the family.

Akshay’s grandfather called the tall coffee trees growing at Mooleh Manay “Excelsa”.

Years later, material from those trees travelled to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Genetics gave us a way to investigate what had until then been family knowledge, and opened up a much larger piece of work around Excelsa, Liberica and what we now know as Coffea × libex.

Sometimes research starts with simply paying attention to what has been growing around you all along.

What began with a few questions around Excelsa has grown into a living collection of coffee species and hybrids at SICC.

Arabica and Robusta sit alongside Excelsa, Liberica, Stenophylla, Racemosa, Bengalensis, Wightiana, Neobridsoniae, Travancorensis and hybrids including Libex and TCH.

We are observing how they establish, grow and respond to the conditions here, while running grafting and agronomic trials alongside them.

It is less a collection for display and more a place to keep asking questions.

We don’t think the future of coffee is about finding a single species to replace another.

It is about widening the options available to growers.

That means understanding species and hybrids through field observations, agronomy and genetics, and asking where they might have a useful place in a changing climate.

Thank you to Michaela Tomchek and Barista Magazine for spending time with our work and sharing this part of the SICC story.

19/08/2026

We’re pretty chuffed to see SICC Excelsa on the Blue Bottle menu.

Back in April, we travelled to World of Coffee San Diego, where Ben and the Blue Bottle team showcased Indian coffees at their booth. The weekend also brought together Peter Giuliano, Akshay and Ben for a brilliant conversation on climate-resilient coffee species with a tasting of all things Beyond Arabica.

A few months later, it’s exciting to see that conversation make its way onto the menu.

Blue Bottle’s Beyond Arabica release features Excelsa from South India Coffee Company alongside Canephora from Great Cherry in Vietnam.

And alongside it, another Excelsa we’re very excited about: an anaerobic natural from 96B in Quang Tri, Vietnam. 96B has been doing some seriously interesting work with this species, and we’re chuffed to see these coffees getting the attention they deserve.

For us, Excelsa isn’t curiosity.

We’ve been working with these trees, researching their genetics with Kew, studying how they perform across different growing environments, experimenting with processing, and trying to understand where this species might fit into the future of coffee.

So yes, seeing it on a Blue Bottle menu feels like a moment.

Not because Excelsa is here to replace Arabica.

Because the future of coffee might be a little more diverse than its past.

Read the full article, link in bio.

16/08/2026

Sunday field notes. Water bodies filling up, new coffee shoots appearing, pepper vines finding their way, insects moving through, and coffee cherries taking shape. The landscape at SICC, growing into the season.

14/08/2026

One of our favourite parts of the job, bringing a coffee back to the person who grew it.

Bisal Munti Arabica Natural, grown by Susheel Uncle, sourced by SICC and roasted by Bloom Coffee Roasters.

We brewed it for him right here at Bisal Munti.

Farm → SICC → Roaster → back to the Farm.

Our Clever Dripper recipe for the morning:

16g coffee
250g water
90°C

Add 250g water to the Clever Dripper, followed by the ground coffee. Give it a gentle stir to make sure everything is evenly saturated.

Steep for 2 - 3 minutes.

Give it another gentle stir, place the Clever on your cup and let it draw down completely.

The Shimsha Canal, running alongside Bisal Munti.

Waterways, farms and pockets of forest all form part of the landscape here.

Healthy pepper vines climb through the farm, intercropped alongside coffee and areca.

Different crops, growing together on the same piece of land.

Not everyone we met at Bisal Munti was interested in talking about coffee.

Some were just keeping an eye on us from above.

Chandragiri Arabica, carrying fruit for the season ahead.

Walking through the farm with Susheel Uncle means stopping often, looking at the plants, talking about what worked this year and thinking about what we can do differently in the next.

Walking the farm, asking questions and learning..

Here, Susheel Uncle was explaining the Jeeva Amruta he makes on the farm, and how he further boosts it with beneficial bacteria to support the soil and the plants.

There is always something to take home from a conversation with him.

A young block of Arabica coming up at Bisal Munti.

Pepper vines being propagated from healthy plants already growing at Bisal Munti, creating planting material for the seasons ahead.

Coffee may be why we came here, but understanding a farm means paying attention to everything growing around it too.

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1 2a Curzon Road, Ealing
London
W51NF

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+44 7969286415

Website

https://www.sicc.coffee/, https://www.youtube.com/@sicc.coffee, https://www.linkedin.com/company/sicc-coffee/, https://w

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