Learning Coffee Across Seven Generations: Sandalkad Estate and Big Cup

It is not the kind of statement one expects to hear from a seventh-generation coffee grower. For more than 175 years, coffee has been woven into the history of Shamveel Nizam's family. Long before specialty coffee became a recognised segment of the industry, and before discussions of fermentation techniques and flavour notes entered mainstream use, his family had already been cultivating coffee in Coorg. Across generations, they built a sustained relationship with the land, one that endured through shifting markets, uncertain harvests, and the gradual evolution of India’s coffee culture. Yet when Shamveel returned to the estate to become actively involved in its operations, he quickly realised that familiarity with coffee and a true understanding of it were not quite the same thing.

He knew the crop, understood the rhythms of the seasons, and could easily distinguish between Arabica and Robusta, but beyond that, there existed an entire world of coffee that remained largely unexplored.

Looking back, it would be easy to frame the last two decades as a carefully planned journey into specialty coffee. Shamveel tells a different story. There was no single turning point or fixed direction, only curiosity unfolding over time. One question led to another, and each answer opened new uncertainties rather than resolving them.

What began as a desire to learn more about coffee gradually transformed the estate itself, eventually giving rise to new varieties, new processing methods, a growing network of cafés, and a broader effort to help others discover coffee in much the same way he had.

Looking at the Estate Differently

For much of his early career, Shamveel's understanding of coffee remained rooted in the plantation. Coffee was cultivated, harvested, processed, and sold, and while quality always mattered, conversations rarely extended beyond production itself.

That began to change as he spent more time engaging with the wider coffee industry. Through programmes such as Kaapi Shastra, visits to other coffee-growing regions, and conversations across the value chain, he encountered a side of coffee that stretched far beyond cultivation. Increasingly, discussions centred on flavour, processing, sensory evaluation, and the many decisions that shape what ultimately ends up in the cup.

The more he learned, the more he realised how much remained unexplored. That pursuit eventually took him to Florence in 2016, where he attended the Espresso Academy and trained in barista skills, brewing, roasting, and sensory evaluation. For someone who had spent years viewing coffee primarily through the lens of production, the experience offered a deeper understanding of what happens after harvest and how those decisions can dramatically influence the final cup. The connection with the academy did not end there.

In the years that followed, Shamveel continued working closely with the institution and eventually brought its programmes to India. Today, he is part of the team behind Espresso Academy India, making its internationally recognised coffee education courses available to students and professionals across the country. The academy remains the only international coffee training institution with a permanent presence in India, creating opportunities for coffee professionals to access global training without leaving the country.

When he returned to Coorg, he brought those questions back to the estate. Sandalkad Estate has long stood apart in the region, with nearly 70% of its land under Arabica and the remaining 30% under Robusta. Rather than treating these proportions as fixed, Shamveel began to explore what else the estate might be capable of producing. The result was a growing collection of varietal trials. Geisha and Pink Bourbon arrived from Colombia, TN1 from Laos, and Castillo found their place among the experimental plots. Alongside them grew another variety whose origins remained uncertain despite repeated attempts to identify it, eventually prompting Shamveel to give it a name of his own: Miracle.

Several of these varietals have now spent close to six years on the estate, yet Shamveel remains reluctant to make large-scale replanting decisions. While a promising harvest may encourage growers to expand quickly, he believes coffee reveals itself over time, as flavour, productivity, and resilience often behave differently across seasons and changing weather conditions.

"We'll wait another two or three years before deciding what to replant."

The decision reflects a philosophy that would come to shape much of what followed on the estate, where patience became just as important as experimentation.

Experimenting With Possibility

Patience became even more important when Sandalkad Estate began its first deliberate steps into specialty coffee. Around six years ago, Shamveel began looking beyond conventional production methods and asking new questions. If varietals could influence flavour, what role did processing play? How much of a coffee’s potential remained hidden simply because it had never been explored?

The answers were neither immediate nor consistent. Anaerobic fermentations were introduced, alongside trials with different yeast cultures, including those from Lal Café. Processing variables were repeatedly adjusted and refined, with each cycle informing the next. Some experiments showed promise; others fell short of expectations. Yet even the unsuccessful lots contributed to a growing understanding of how coffee responded to its environment.

One season alone involved 28 separate micro-lot trials. Only 10 were ultimately considered successful. For many growers, that ratio might have felt discouraging. For Shamveel, it reinforced an understanding that was already taking shape: progress in specialty coffee is rarely linear.

Much of this work has been a collaborative effort. Throughout these years of experimentation, Shamveel has been closely supported by his cousin, S M Faisal, who has worked alongside him to evaluate processes, refine trials, and navigate the inevitable uncertainties that come with specialty coffee. Together, they have approached experimentation not as a search for quick wins, but as a gradual process of learning from both successes and failures.

“Be patient,” he says.

It is advice he now shares with growers entering specialty coffee, not as a reassurance that success will come eventually, but as a reminder that every estate behaves differently. Rainfall, elevation, shade, temperature, and soil composition all shape how coffee develops. A process that works on one farm may produce an entirely different result elsewhere.

As he puts it, “You can’t copy somebody else’s process and expect the same result. Every estate is different.”

At Sandalkad Estate, this understanding has shaped an approach guided less by external trends and more by close observation of the land itself. Occasionally, that approach leads to standout results. One experimental lot, processed using specialty techniques with botanical additions, went on to sell for more than ₹25,000 per kilogram. But Shamveel rarely frames such outcomes as milestones. They are, instead, reminders of what becomes possible when curiosity is allowed to lead.

Today, between twenty-five and thirty per cent of the estate’s production falls within the specialty category, though the work feels far from complete. New varietals continue to be evaluated, and new processes are tested each harvest, each season, raising fresh questions.

And as these experiments accumulated, another question gradually emerged. If cultivation and processing could shape flavour so significantly, what role did roasting play in defining the final cup?

Learning to Roast, Building Big Cup

That question stayed with Shamveel long after he returned from Florence. Farm-level work had already opened one set of possibilities, and processing had revealed another, but as his understanding of coffee continued to deepen across cultivation and post-harvest practices, his attention naturally shifted towards the stage that connects it all.

Roasting, he realised, was where everything converged, the point where months of work on the farm met a series of decisions that could either reveal a coffee’s character or obscure it entirely. That responsibility is precisely what drew him in.

“Roasting is where you can either make the coffee shine or completely spoil it,” he says.

For Shamveel, roasting was never simply about operating a machine, but about understanding how to translate everything that happened on the farm into the final cup, preserving intention and character.

He chose to learn it himself, and for the next five years, every batch roasted for the business passed through his hands. It was not the most efficient approach, nor the easiest, as it meant long periods spent observing how different coffees responded to heat, comparing profiles across batches, and refining decisions through repetition until patterns slowly began to emerge. Over time, roasting became an extension of farming itself, shaped by timing, restraint, and precision, where even small adjustments in development time, roasting speed, or approach could significantly alter the final expression of the coffee.

Even now, after stepping back from day-to-day roasting responsibilities, he admits that he still finds his way back whenever he can.

“I still love to do it whenever I get a chance,” he says.

As this work evolved, the roastery grew beyond a one-person operation, with additional roasters joining the team, enabling parallel experiments, side-by-side comparisons, and a more structured approach to building shared understanding. What had once been an individual process gradually became a collective one, as the team developed a common language for roasting through repeated trials, careful documentation of roast profiles, and continuous feedback loops that steadily refined quality over time.

Over time, this shared process made one thing increasingly clear: everything from cultivation to processing to roasting culminated in a single moment in the cup. That realisation led him towards another question. How could people begin to understand everything that shaped coffee before it reached them? The answer arrived in the form of Big Cup.

When the first café opened in Coorg, it was met with scepticism. Specialty coffee was still taking shape in the region, and a café built around carefully sourced, roasted coffee felt unfamiliar to many. At the time, conversations around flavour notes, processing methods, and brewing styles were not yet part of everyday language, making the idea seem slightly ahead of its context.

“Everybody said it wouldn’t work in Coorg.”

Within the first month, however, the café had already become profitable. More importantly, it revealed something that had been overlooked: curiosity about coffee already existed; it simply needed the right entry point to be activated.

From a single location, Big Cup gradually expanded into a network of cafés across Coorg, Mysore, Bengaluru, Phuket, and Odisha. As it grew, consistency became essential, with each outlet aligned through structured training, defined operating systems, and tighter quality control across locations.

Yet some of the most influential decisions were not about systems at all. One of the most deliberate choices was the placement of the roaster. Rather than keeping roasting separate from the customer experience, the roaster was positioned in full view, bringing one of coffee's most transformative stages into everyday sight. Customers who might never have thought about roasting began to pause, asking about the machine, the science of roasting, and how the process shaped flavour.

What began as a design decision soon became an educational tool. Engagement deepened as curiosity grew, shifting the way people related to coffee itself, from a finished product to a process worth noticing.

The same thinking extended to the brew bar placed near the entrance. It was not designed merely for efficiency but to bring brewing into view, allowing customers to watch preparation unfold, ask questions, and connect the final cup to the steps that led to it.

Over time, coffee stopped being something consumed in isolation. It became something seen in stages, understood as a process rather than just a product.

Teaching People How Coffee Can Taste

If the roaster and brew bar sparked curiosity, they also confirmed something Shamveel had been observing for some time. Customers were beginning to ask more questions about what differentiated one coffee from another. What had once been a rare curiosity was now becoming part of everyday conversation, with people asking where their coffee came from, why some cups tasted fruitier than others, and what happened between harvest and brewing to create such variation in flavour.

One of the clearest signs of this shift appeared in changing consumption habits. For years, milk-based beverages dominated café menus and served as the default entry point for most customers. Gradually, however, more people began moving towards black coffee. Across Big Cup’s cafés, it now accounts for roughly 30% to 40% of orders, driven largely by younger consumers and a growing interest in health-conscious choices. The change has been especially visible in recent years.

For Shamveel, this reflects a broader shift in how customers engage with coffee, with a growing willingness to experience it in its pure form and notice flavour notes that are often softened by milk and sugar.

But curiosity rarely develops in isolation; it needs space, exposure, and gentle prompting. Rather than expecting customers to immediately adapt to unfamiliar coffees, the team builds opportunities for exploration through tastings and samples, introducing new beverages in small quantities so customers can experience differences without committing to a full order. These quiet encounters often become the entry point into a deeper engagement with specialty coffee.

Some of the most effective examples of this approach have come through flavour experimentation. Cold brews infused with mint, lemon, and mandarin have become customer favourites, offering an accessible introduction to specialty coffee while also challenging assumptions about what coffee can taste like, especially for first-time visitors encountering it beyond traditional formats.

That intention to make coffee more understandable extends beyond the cafés themselves. As specialty coffee became more central to the estate’s identity, Shamveel recognised that many consumers had never visited a coffee farm, seen coffee cherries on the tree, or understood the scale of work behind a single cup. In response, the estate itself evolved into another space for learning.

Visitors now begin with a coffee before moving into the plantation for a guided walk through Sandalkaad’s shade-grown landscape, where coffee matures under the canopy. Along the way, conversations shift from cultivation and harvesting to processing, varietals, and quality, helping guests see coffee as an agricultural product shaped by layered decisions rather than a finished beverage in a cup.

The experience continues with a structured session on the history of coffee in Coorg and the stages involved in transforming freshly harvested cherries into green bean ready for roasting. It then culminates in a professional cupping session, where visitors taste commercial and specialty coffees side by side and, often for the first time, begin to understand how processing, roasting, and quality decisions shape what they experience in the cup.

At The Big Cup, a space built around coffee, conversation, and discovery. For many, the visit shifts perception. What once felt invisible becomes tangible, decisions that once seemed minor gain weight, and the distance between farm and cup becomes noticeably smaller.

That same focus on creating meaningful experiences has occasionally led to ideas that sit beyond conventional definitions of estates and cafés, projects that bring together education, experimentation, and community in ways that continue to expand what coffee can represent.

Building a Community Around Coffee

Some of the café's most distinctive ideas have emerged from moments of pure curiosity. One such experiment began recently while the team was cleaning the brew bar. A staff member happened to place one pour-over brewer on top of another, creating an arrangement that immediately caught Shamveel's attention.

"It just came into my mind, let's do something," he recalls.

What began as a passing observation soon evolved into a far more ambitious experiment. Shamveel brought together coffees from seven different estates, brewing them through a seven-tower pour-over setup. The process was not without setbacks. Several brewers broke during testing, a costly complication, but the team persisted.

When the brew finally came together, the result surprised even Shamveel. Expecting the coffee to over-extract, he was instead met with a cup that tasted remarkably good. The outcome challenged many of his assumptions about what could be achieved through a pour-over setup. Looking back, he believes it may have been the first of its kind.

"That's supposed to be the first seven-tower pour-over. Nobody's done it."

The experiment has since inspired an even larger undertaking. Soon, Shamveel will attempt a twenty-tower pour-over event, bringing together twenty estates, twenty filters, and twenty coffees in a single showcase. Participants will brew and present their own coffees, transforming what began as an accidental discovery into an increasingly ambitious expression of the café's experimental spirit.

That philosophy extends within the organisation as much as outside it. Running cafés across locations requires more than systems; it depends on people who remain curious and engaged in learning. The team conducts regular cupping sessions to develop staff palates and deepen understanding, while roast profiles are documented and shared via an internal library, allowing knowledge to grow alongside the business.

Learning is continuous rather than complete. Internal competitions, including Brewers Cup and barista championships, reinforce this by sharpening skills while embedding experimentation into everyday work. The aim is not only to identify strong performers but to sustain a culture of constant improvement.

As Big Cup expanded beyond Coorg, this culture moved with it. The café in Phuket is a clear example. Serving a largely expatriate and health-conscious audience, it operates in a market where coffees from Brazil, Colombia, and Ethiopia are more familiar, while Indian coffee remains relatively unknown. That unfamiliarity often becomes an entry point. Customers arrive with expectations shaped by other origins and leave with a different perspective. Through conversations, tastings, and brewing, many encounter Indian specialty coffee for the first time, gaining exposure to an origin that remains underrepresented in global narratives.

Back in Kodagu, the work continues in parallel. The Geishas keep growing, the Pink Bourbons remain under evaluation, and Castillo, TN1, and Miracle continue to reveal new characteristics with each harvest.

It reflects the same patience that has shaped the estate’s approach from the start. For Shamveel, the most meaningful understanding builds slowly through observation, patience, and curiosity. Seven generations in, Sandalkad Estate is still evolving, still experimenting, and still discovering what the land has to teach.