Our Story

Chapter one

A cry in the forest

Long before there were coffee estates in Chikmagalur, these hills were only forest.

A young man named Sala was walking through it with his teacher, Sudatta, when a tiger sprang out of the trees. Sudatta cried out:

"Hoy, Sala!"

Strike, Sala. Sala didn't run. He stood his ground and struck, and that cry became the name of a dynasty, the Hoysalas, who carved the tiger into their royal emblem.

Our farm carries their name. And the tiger on every one of our bags? That's him, just a little smaller. (The full legend, and where it happened.)

Chapter two

A farm that is mostly forest

Hoysala Estate sits about 1,200 metres up in the Western Ghats, in Chikmagalur, Karnataka. Walk in and you won't find neat rows of coffee in open sun. You'll find coffee growing under nearly 50 kinds of native trees, pepper vines climbing their trunks, and cardamom, oranges and avocados growing in between. Bison still wander through, and now and then, a tiger.

We farm it with care: certified organic, and one of only three biodynamic coffee farms in India. Our own cows make the manure. The birds and earthworms do the rest.

Every April the hills turn white with coffee blossom, and for a few days the estate smells of jasmine. By winter those flowers have become deep red cherries, and we pick them by hand.

Chapter three

Then we started roasting

For a long time, our coffee left the estate as green beans in sacks, and we rarely saw the cup it became. We wanted to taste it the way we'd want you to: roasted with care, and still carrying the farm in it. So we began roasting it ourselves, and Tiny Tiger was born.

Today we roast only after your order comes in. Every bag carries its roast date and travels straight from us to your door. No traders, no warehouses, nobody in between.