The birth of Indian coffee ☕

This is the story behind every mocha you have ever sipped.

Have you ever wondered where coffee in India actually began? It is one of my favourite stories, and it starts with a man and his beard.

In the seventeenth century, a Sufi saint named Baba Budan set out from Karnataka on his pilgrimage to Mecca. On his way back, he passed through a little port town in Yemen called Mocha.

Mocha was the coffee capital of the world back then, and the Arabs guarded it fiercely. You could buy roasted beans, but smuggling out a raw, plantable one was punishable by death, so that no one else could ever grow their own.

Baba Budan was not having it. 😏 He tucked seven coffee beans into his beard, seven because it is a sacred number, and quietly walked them all the way home to the hills of Chikkamagaluru.

Seven beans. Hidden in a beard. 🧔🏽
The entire Indian coffee story. ☕

He planted them on the slopes. They grew. And that one handful became the very first coffee on Indian soil. Those hills now carry his name, Baba Budan Giri, and almost every cup of Indian coffee traces back to them.

Here is the part I love. That same port town, Mocha, is exactly where the word mocha comes from. Mocha is what happens when coffee meets chocolate. Two dark, beautiful things, together.

So naturally, we made one.

The tribute 🍫☕

Dark Cold Chocolate, Mocha

Real 55% dark couverture chocolate with that gentle coffee warmth running through it. Blend a sachet with cold milk and ice for thirty seconds, and you have a cafe-style mocha at home. A small bow to seven smuggled beans. Buy HERE

History is full of people who carried something precious a very long way home, just to share it. I think about that more than I should every time I make a cup. ☕