He continued attending short-term and long-term programmes, while also seeking opportunities to train outside India. Each workshop added another layer to his understanding, sharpening his ability to distinguish origins, recognise defects and make sense of the subtleties that reveal themselves only through repeated tasting.

A colleague in the United States, already qualified as a Q Grader, eventually encouraged him to attempt the certification. He had watched Sushanth’s progress and believed he was capable of clearing it, but finding a course proved almost as difficult as preparing for one. Q Grading was barely known in India, and no local programmes were available, leaving Sushanth to search for nearly two years before he found a course in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He registered immediately and travelled to Indonesia with little formal preparation beyond a few suggestions from his colleague. The programme compressed 22 tests into five demanding days, covering coffees from different origins, triangulation exercises and the identification of aromatics through fragrance. A failed test could be attempted again, but the limited time left little room for error.

Even his business head tried to ease the pressure before he left, assuring him that the company would support him regardless of the result. The qualification was difficult, and failure would not be held against him. Sushanth, however, cleared every requirement on his first attempt in October 2012.

The achievement brought media attention and professional recognition, but its deeper significance lay in how it expanded the world available to him. The young taster who had once discovered his ability through a modest blind-tasting exercise was now equipped to evaluate coffee against international standards.

That journey later took him to the Cup of Excellence, where he became an international juror alongside cuppers, roasters and importers from across the coffee industry. The competition evaluates some of the finest coffees produced in participating origins, with scores of 90 or above earning the designation of presidential coffee and access to auctions where exceptional lots can command extraordinary prices.

For Sushanth, however, these journeys offer more than a place at the judging table. Whenever he visits a producing origin, he also visits its farms, studying how growers handle harvesting and post-harvest processing. He returns to India with those observations, considering which practices can be adapted to local conditions and shared with the farmers whose coffees will eventually arrive at his own cupping table.

A Season Spent at the Cupping Table

For all the international competitions and farms that have shaped Sushanth’s palate, much of his work is governed by the urgent rhythm of the Indian harvest. As the season gathers pace, his attention shifts towards Chikkamagaluru, where Arabicas, single-estate lots and specially processed coffees begin arriving at OFI’s dry-mill facility in quick succession.

The company handles coffees across three locations. Coorg and Kerala lots are processed at Kushalnagar, coffees from the Sakleshpur region move through the Hassan facility, and Chikkamagaluru Arabicas are handled at the unit there. The coffees arrive in different forms, from dried cherries and parchment to clean coffee, each carrying the decisions made during harvesting and processing.

For nearly five or six months of the peak season, Sushanth remains in Chikkamagaluru, close to the samples and the decisions that depend on them. On the busiest days, more than a thousand cups may pass across his table, ranging from commercial coffees to single-estate and specially processed lots. Rather than counting the total number of cups tasted across an entire harvest, Sushanth focuses on ensuring that every sample receives a careful assessment, with the constant exposure deepening his understanding of how different origins, qualities, and processing choices reveal themselves in the cup.

The season also divides his life between Chikkamagaluru and Bengaluru. He spends the working week close to the mill, then returns to his family at the weekend, although the journey home does not always bring a pause from coffee. Some growers need feedback before the next round of processing begins, and waiting until Monday could mean losing two crucial days. To keep that from happening, Sushanth has created a small cupping setup at home, where he can continue assessing farmer samples over the weekend. His wife, who is also a certified coffee taster, sometimes joins him in evaluating the samples and sharing her assessment.

The arrangement reveals how closely timing and quality are connected. For a farmer in the middle of a harvest, feedback is not simply an opinion to be considered later. It may determine whether the next batch follows the same method, is adjusted in time or takes an entirely different direction.

When the Farmer Tastes the Difference

For Sushanth, helping growers often begins with a simple request: send the coffee. He knows that many hesitate, assuming that a professional assessment must come with a fee, but he is quick to reassure them.

“I tell them, I don’t charge you. Please send it,” he says.

The invitation comes from more than professional curiosity. As a grower himself, Sushanth understands how difficult it can be to recognise what must change when the answer lies inside a cup the farmer may never have tasted. Cupping is the skill he knows best, and offering it freely allows him to help other growers understand how their choices during harvesting and processing have shaped the final coffee.

His involvement begins even before the harvest. From October onwards, he visits farms to see whether the necessary infrastructure is in place, then returns during the season to advise on processing and conduct training programmes. The first subject he raises is usually selective picking, a practice he admits is demanding but refuses to describe as impossible. Not every coffee produced in India can become a specialty lot, but he believes the overall standard can rise when greater care is given to what is picked and how it is handled afterwards.

Advice alone, however, does not always change habits built over many years. During his workshops, Sushanth therefore asks farmers to bring coffees from their own estates. The samples are roasted and tasted alongside coffees from other farms, allowing growers to experience the results of their work rather than hear about them only in technical terms. Differences in harvesting, processing and quality suddenly become tangible, because the evidence is there in the cup.

Sushanth has watched this process alter both perception and practice. Coffees that once carried defective notes and fell below specialty standards have moved into the 82 to 84 range after growers applied what they had learnt. The improvement has also reached the price they receive, with some lots that previously sold at the prevailing market rate earning premiums of approximately ₹500 to ₹1,000 per bag.

These examples matter when he meets resistance. Some growers are understandably reluctant to abandon methods they have followed for years, but change becomes easier to consider when another farmer’s experience offers visible proof. Better-processed coffee can be tasted, its improved score measured, and the premium it earns counted. In that progression, quality stops being an abstract promise and becomes something the grower can recognise for themselves.

Processing With Purpose

On coffee farms, the name of a new process can sometimes travel faster than the knowledge required to carry it out. Sushanth believes, however, that a process must be understood properly if it is to produce the desired result. Sushanth has seen growers attempt honey processing simply because they have heard about it elsewhere, only to discover that producing the desired character in the cup is far more demanding than adopting the label.

Much of the difficulty lies in managing the mucilage, the sticky layer surrounding the bean after its outer skin has been removed. If too much of it is lost, the resulting white or yellow honey may taste much like a bright, clean washed coffee, without the additional complexity the grower had hoped to create. Red and black honeys can develop greater fruit complexity, but only when the mucilage is carefully preserved throughout the process.

The first decisive point, according to Sushanth, is the pulper, which must remove the skin without disturbing the mucilage beneath it. When a machine achieves that balance, he considers half the work complete, although the more difficult task begins during drying, when the sticky material can drain away as the coffee rests on trays. Rather than allowing it to be lost, he advises growers to collect the mucilage and return it to the beans.

The pace of drying matters just as much as the material retained on the coffee. Drawing on practices he has observed in other producing regions, Sushanth encourages growers to extend the drying period rather than rushing it, adapting those lessons to the conditions on Indian farms. Together, these decisions determine whether the coffee develops the fruit complexity associated with a deeper honey process or merely carries its name.

This distinction is central to how Sushanth understands experimentation. A process is not defined by what the grower calls it, but by the care given to the machinery, the mucilage and the rhythm of drying. Long before the coffee is described to a buyer, the cup will reveal whether the method was properly understood or simply imitated.

The Distance Between Quality and Recognition

Some of India’s finest coffees can stand alongside those from the world’s most celebrated origins, yet they do not always receive the same recognition once they leave the cupping table. For Sushanth, this gap between what the country produces and how the world perceives it has become one of the defining questions facing Indian coffee.

The industry is already working against difficult conditions. Erratic blossom showers, unreliable backing rains and prolonged dry spells are affecting both yields and quality, while uneven attention to harvesting and post-harvest processing creates another form of inconsistency. Some estates are producing increasingly refined specialty lots, but their work can be obscured when coffees of widely different standards are grouped together under the same origin.

At home, however, the market is beginning to change. Specialty coffee is no longer concentrated in a handful of metropolitan cafés, with home brewers, independent roasters, and coffee businesses now emerging in smaller cities as well. Customers are also becoming more curious, asking not merely for a cappuccino but about the estate, varietal and brewing method behind it. To Sushanth, these questions signal a market shift toward understanding coffee through provenance rather than simply through preparation.

That curiosity has yet to translate into equal recognition abroad. Origins such as Colombia, Panama and Kenya already carry reputations that shape how buyers approach their coffees, while India is still establishing an identity of its own. Sushanth has seen Indian lots receive scores comparable to those from better-known origins yet still struggle to command the same value, not because the cup is inherently weaker, but because the name attached to it carries less weight.

“We have to build that brand as India,” he says.

Individual estates are beginning to take that work into their own hands by exhibiting at trade shows and building identities around their coffees. Sushanth contributes through the relationships he has formed as a Cup of Excellence juror, using his interactions with international roasters and importers to bring greater attention to Indian specialty coffee and strengthen its presence in global conversations.

The shift is significant because Indian coffee was once commonly treated as a substitute, brought in when a coffee from another origin was unavailable, and its profile was close enough to fill the gap. Sushanth believes that position is changing as international customers increasingly purchase Indian specialty lots alongside coffees from Latin America and Africa. The next step is not simply to place Indian coffee on the same table, but to give buyers a reason to remember where it came from.

Beyond Arabica

While tasting one of the samples placed before him, Sushanth paused over an exceptionally smooth Robusta that, in his view, showed what the species could offer when handled well. Its quality, he felt, was strong enough to stand beside Arabica rather than be dismissed as inherently inferior.

In Sushanth’s view, no origin produces better Robustas than India, yet coffees of this quality remain insufficiently understood even within the country. He believes they should be served in Indian cafés as well as introduced to international buyers, allowing domestic consumers to discover that fine Robusta can offer a very different experience from the qualities commonly associated with it.

India’s opportunity also extends to less familiar coffees such as Liberica and Excelsa. Sushanth has tasted exceptional examples of both, including an Excelsa from Coorg that he scored at 90. Yet many people, including roasters outside India, still do not understand these coffees well enough to evaluate them on their own terms.

Sushanth argues that they cannot be approached through the same lens used for Arabica and Robusta. It took considerable time for international buyers to recognise fine Robusta, and he believes a similar effort is now required to build an understanding of high-quality Liberica and Excelsa.

For Sushanth, these coffees represent one of India’s greatest opportunities. Their quality gives the country something distinctive to bring to market, but promotion must be accompanied by education to help buyers understand what they are tasting and how these coffees should be approached.

The Promise of the Next Cup

The progress of Indian coffee is becoming increasingly visible at Sushanth’s cupping table. There was a time when reaching a score of 84 felt difficult, but coffees in the mid-80s are now appearing more regularly, while a small number of estates are beginning to reach much higher levels. In one recent season, he tasted several Indian coffees that scored around 90, with the strongest reaching 91.

The improvement is not uniform, and India’s reputation has yet to catch up with the quality of its finest lots, but the gap between the two is narrowing. For Sushanth, every coffee that reaches these higher scores reflects the attention growers are bringing to harvesting, processing and the cup itself, proving that standards once considered exceptional are gradually becoming attainable.

That possibility is also what keeps him tasting through days when more than a thousand cups may pass before him. The work is repetitive only in appearance, because any sample might reveal a quality he has not encountered before.

“Whenever I am cupping coffees, I get to cup these kinds of exceptional coffees,” he says. “This is what drives me.”

For those beginning to explore coffee, his advice is far less intimidating than the professional protocols surrounding his own work might suggest. He encourages people to begin brewing at home, tasting attentively and comparing one coffee with another, even if they cannot yet identify every nuance. Understanding develops through attention and repetition, while formal training can follow once curiosity has taken root.

More than two decades ago, Sushanth entered coffee through a newspaper advertisement for a course whose possibilities were still unclear. The journey that followed carried him far beyond anything that notice could have promised, yet the impulse at its centre has remained remarkably consistent. A new sample still arrives with something unknown inside it, and Sushanth still returns to the cup to discover what it might reveal.