For years, if you asked us for a decaf, the answer was no because everything about Indian-origin decaf worked against us. Today, 12th September that changes.
We're launching the world's first Excelsa decaf, and it's the first time we're taking a decaf direct-to-consumer here in the UK.
This is a big one. Grab a cup (ideally not decaf yet as you'll want to save that first pour for later) and let us walk you through it.
The Decaf Problem Nobody Wanted to Solve
Decaf has an image problem, and it's a fair one. Ask most coffee drinkers what decaf tastes like and you'll hear some version of "flat," "burnt," or "fine, I guess." That reputation didn't come from nowhere.
Decaffeination is a violent process for a coffee bean. Whatever method is used (solvent-based, water-based, or CO2) the bean is stripped of caffeine, and along with it, a good deal of the delicate character that made the coffee worth drinking in the first place. Roasters have historically compensated for this by roasting decaf dark, using heavy roast flavours (smoke, char, bitterness) to paper over what's missing. The result is a cup that tastes like "coffee, but sadder" and an entire category of drinkers who've quietly lowered their expectations.
We didn't think that was good enough. But solving it meant solving a much harder problem first finding a specialty-grade Indian-origin coffee that was even worth decaffeinating in the first place.
Why We've Never Sold Decaf Online (Until Now)
Here's the honest answer to a question we've been asked more times than we can count: why doesn't Coromandel Coast sell decaf?
Three reasons, and none of them are good excuses, just realities of this supply chain:
1. Indian-origin decaf is genuinely rare.
Decaffeination facilities capable of specialty-grade work are concentrated in a handful of locations globally, and getting Indian coffee, let alone Indian Excelsa, into that pipeline at the volumes and quality we'd want has never been straightforward.
2. The market for it has historically been thin.
Decaf has long been treated as an afterthought category rather than something worth genuine investment, which means less commercial pressure to solve the sourcing and process problems that plague it.
3. Decaffeination is expensive.
The process compounds the cost of coffee that's already priced for its rarity and quality. Doing this properly with a specialty Indian coffee meant accepting a price point that needed the product to be exceptional to justify it.
For years, our answer was to wait rather than compromise. We kept pushing our supply chain partner, **SICC**, to find us something worth putting our name on. Most years, the answer was "not yet." This year, it wasn't.
Enter Excelsa
If you read last week's piece, you already know why Excelsa matters to us. It's the coffee species most drinkers have never heard of, and only formally recognised in scientific literature in recent years, despite growing across parts of India and Southeast Asia for generations. We started working with Indian Excelsa back in 2020, years before "third species" became anything close to an industry talking point, because the cup quality convinced us long before the taxonomy caught up.
Excelsa brings something genuinely different to the cup: a natural sweetness and fruit-forward character that neither Arabica nor Robusta quite replicates. It's exactly the kind of coffee that has enough character to survive decaffeination — and enough character to make surviving it worth doing.
When SICC, our long-term supply chain partners came back to us with a decaffeinated Excelsa, we didn't expect much going in. We had a long chat on price points and quantities. Truth is, we've tasted a lot of underwhelming decaf over the years, and low expectations felt like the sensible default. What arrived in the cup blew us away.
The Science: A Species Rewritten
It's worth pausing on just how recent Excelsa's scientific identity is. For most of the twentieth century, what growers called Excelsa was formally lumped in as a variety of Coffea liberica treated as a footnote rather than a coffee in its own right. That changed only last year, in 2025, when Dr Aaron Davis and colleagues at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew published genomic research demonstrating that Liberica coffee actually comprises three genetically distinct species, one of which is Excelsa (formally Coffea dewevrei).
This is not a minor taxonomic footnote. It means the coffee world has spent the better part of a century mislabelling (and undervaluing) a species that had been hiding in plain sight, grown by farmers who knew the difference long before the science confirmed it. We started buying Indian Excelsa in 2020, years before Kew's paper existed, because our growing partners' generational knowledge told us this coffee was something distinct. That instinct isn't abstract for us, either. Growing up, I remember seeing this coffee lining the estates and thinking, even then, that there had to be a reason it stood apart. It's a rare and satisfying thing when hard science eventually catches up to what farmers (and a curious teenager wandering the estates) had already sensed for generations.
Climate Resilience: The Other Reason This Matters
Excelsa's importance isn't only about flavour. Historically, Excelsa (alongside Liberica) was introduced into Indian coffee estates in the late 19th and early 20th centuries specifically because of its tolerance for leaf rust and its ability to thrive at warmer, lower elevations than Arabica ever could. As global temperatures climb and rust pressure on traditional coffee-growing regions intensifies, that resilience is no longer a historical curiosity, it's a genuine hedge against the instability threatening coffee supply chains worldwide.
Research programmes are now actively exploring Excelsa's climate-resilient potential under Indian growing conditions, precisely because a warming world needs coffee species that don't rely on the cool, high-altitude belts Arabica depends on. Every bag of Excelsa we sell (decaf included) is a small vote for a more climate-resilient future for coffee.
The Process: Why CO2 Matters
The decaffeination method here is a CO2 process, one of the gentlest ways to strip caffeine from green coffee. Rather than using aggressive chemical solvents or excessive heat, the process uses pressurised carbon dioxide, which is far more selective about what it removes. Caffeine comes out; the compounds responsible for flavour and aroma are much better preserved.
This is the quiet, unglamorous reason so much decaf tastes the way it does: cheaper or harsher methods sacrifice flavour for efficiency. CO2 processing costs more and takes more care, but it's the difference between "decaf that apologises for itself" and a coffee that stands on its own.
What's in the Cup
This is not a coffee that needs to be forgiven for being decaf. Roasted light to let the origin character speak, it delivers an orange zest like bright, citrus lift up front and a natural sweetness reminiscent of red berries that lingers through the finish.
No smoke. No char. No bitterness doing the heavy lifting. Just a genuinely good, complex cup that happens to have the caffeine removed. If you've written off decaf as a lesser category, this is the one built to change your mind.
A Double First
To be clear about what's actually happening here, because it's worth stating plainly:
1. World first — this is the first Excelsa decaf to exist, full stop.
2. UK first — this is the first time Coromandel Coast is launching a decaf direct-to-consumer, ending years of us simply not offering one.
We don't say "world first" lightly and this is a genuinely new thing in a category that hasn't seen much genuine innovation in a long time.
Who This Is For
If you've given up on decaf, this is the coffee to try again with. If you're caffeine-sensitive but unwilling to accept a lesser cup, this was made for you. And if you've followed our Excelsa journey and wondered how far the species could be pushed, here's your answer. decaf doesn't get better than this.
---
*Coromandel Coast is the UK's only Indian-origin specialty coffee roastery, working directly with growing communities across India since 2017. Every cup of coffee funds a day's clean water access through our profit-for-purpose model, supporting over 120 rural projects to date.