For that special aroma

Exotic display

What started three years back with a few stalls on the MG Road Boulevard has now grown into a much bigger and exciting event on the city’s calendar. The ‘Coffee Santhe’, organised to raise funds for women coffee estate labourers and their girl children, has an array of interesting activities on its agenda, enough to keep coffee lovers engaged for a couple of hours.

The third edition of the santhe, which is on at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, has been put together by the Women’s Coffee Alliance — India Chapter and will be on till tomorrow from 10 am till 7.30 pm. The highlight of the event is the variety of stalls showcasing different brewing techniques and samples of delicious coffees made using those.

‘The Brew Room’, a cafe based in Chennai and soon opening to Bengaluru, demonstrated five distinct techniques and handed over cups for customers to enjoy. “We have speciality organic coffees and are showcasing ‘Chemex’, ‘French Press’, ‘Aeropress’, ‘Turkish Coffee’ and ‘Vacuum Siphon’ techniques. There’s ‘Thai cold coffee’, ‘Iced latte’, ‘South Indian dabara coffee’ and ‘Swiss chocolate smoothie’ along with cookies and chocolate fudge for the visitors,” said one of the co-owners.

The stall by ‘Martha’s Preserves’ saw visitors savouring ‘Tiramisu cupcakes’, ‘Chocolate, coffee and caramel cake’ and ‘Mocha chocolate chip cookies’. Poornima Jayaraj, who has a coffee farm in Chikkamagaluru, had set up ‘T’s cakes’ named after her daughter Tanya who’s passionate about baking. “I have a brand called ‘Varshini’; it’s a citrus flavoured coffee and we are pairing it with home-baked brownies and cinnamon cake. ‘Mahila’, the brand by WCAI, is a chocolate and caramel flavoured one that’s available to savour with banana cake,” said Poornima.

There was also a stall by ‘True South’, a unique startup that makes ready-to-use filter coffee decoction in two blends — ‘Eighty 20’ and ‘Malabar’. “One would only find beans or coffee powder in general; however, we are providing a liquid/decoction which one can easily use to prepare a cup of coffee at home,” said the owner Harish.

Purnesh D M, one of the founding members of WCAI, expressed his excitement over the santhe gaining momentum since its inception. One of the fourth generation growers in his family, he unveiled the new look of his brand named ‘Classic’ and also had some other award-winning coffees from his brand to taste. Coffee powder from the estates of Sakleshpur was available at ‘77 Coffee’ and they also had do-it-yourself coffee filters for sale.

The women’s Barista championship definitely attracted much attention with many showcasing their skills at preparing the beverage. Giving the bean an artistic twist was ‘Chammak Challo Cool Maal’, a startup that displayed earrings made with coffee beans among other quirky jewellery pieces.

Meanwhile, Hima Bindu and Dheeraj Gadicherla saw people making a beeline to their respective stalls to appreciate their paintings made using the brew. Their creativity truly showed that there’s more to the beverage than just sipping it from the cup.