Kalinga

Kalinga comes from Madhu Agro Plantation and is the labour of love of Mrs. T. Nirmala Reddy, now a septuagenarian, who has been actively nurturing this 45-acre estate since her husband first established it in 1996 as a post-retirement nature retreat.

The plantation was severely tested in 2014: the untimely demise of Mr. Reddy was followed almost immediately by Cyclone Hudhud, which uprooted large numbers of shade trees and caused extensive damage to the coffee plants. Rather than step back, the family stepped up. Nirmala's daughter Rajeshwari returned from Australia to join her mother, making Madhu Agro the only women-run coffee farm in the region with a workforce made up predominantly of women from surrounding tribal villages.

Today the farm is a lush intercropped landscape of spices, fruit trees and native plants: cinnamon, pepper, bay leaf, ginger, tamarind, lemon and over 20 varieties of fruit, including jamun, jackfruit, passion fruit, rose apple, chikoo, guava and more. Monkeys, wild boar, rabbits, snakes, civet cats and a wide variety of birds call it home.

Post harvest Process

Sequentially Fermented Washed is a post-harvest method that runs two distinct fermentations back to back before a final wash (and it's what sets this coffee part from a conventional washed).

After pulping, the beans go into closed barrels for a 16-hour dry fermentation. No water, just the bean, its residual mucilage, and the microbial environment doing its work - breaking down sugars, building sweetness and early complexity. After a partial wash to transition the batch, the beans go back in for a second round: 12 hours submerged in water. This wet fermentation adds a different dimension - clarity, brightness and a cleaner expression of the varietal's character. A full final wash halts the process at exactly the right moment.

The logic of sequencing dry then wet is that each stage does something the other cannot. The dry phase is generative; it builds body and depth. The wet phase is refining; it cleans up, lifts the cup and ensures complete mucilage breakdown without over-fermentation. Used together, they produce a coffee with more layered complexity than a single-pass washed, while retaining the clarity and structure that define the washed category.