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Her cup of cheer

Taking a coffee break with Sunalini Menon, India's first woman coffee taster

TASTE AND TELL Sunalini Menon Photo: K.V.Srinivasan

Nobody offers Sunalini Menon coffee when she visits their homes. "So I ask for water," she laughs, "till curiosity overcomes me and I ask the hostess for just a taste."

After all, no matter how fragrant your steaming cuppa is, it's still intimidating to present it to a coffee expert of Sunalini's stature. She is India's first woman coffee taster, but that's not what makes her so remarkable. She's also possibly now one of the most influential people in coffee today, travelling the world judging the beans and brew, helping develop specific blends and participating as jury in prestigious cupping competitions the world over.

For a woman who is now `Quality Ombudsman' of the speciality Coffee Association of India and a member of several national and international coffee associations, with a staggering list of awards to her name, it's ironic that Sunalini's coffee career began by fluke.

"I think to myself, perhaps it was a little like destiny," she says, discussing how she originally wanted to be a dietician after studying food technology at the Women's Christian College and Madras University. Then, in 1971, she chanced upon an advertisement by the Coffee Board of India inviting job applications, and before you could say cappuccino she was working for them as an assistant taster in the quality control division.

"Nobody had even heard of coffee tasting in those days, and even tea tasting was a male dominated profession," she says, describing how telling people what she did started getting a little embarrassing. "They would say, `What! You're on a coffee break and being paid for it?'"

A man's world

Being a woman didn't help. "I had a lot of difficulties. It was a path that nobody knew about in India. And coffee is literally a man's world." And even now, apparently, tea's not much better. "I was part of an international jury for tea in Dubai last week. There was just one other woman in that sea of men, and she rushed over to me and whispered, `Thank god I saw you!'" Sunalini adds thoughtfully, "Maybe it has to do with the beverages — coffee, tea and cocoa are all male dominated — it's something to do with their culture.' However, she does add that the male bastion crumbles quite cheerfully. "Once they accept you they look at you with a little awe and respect. Men realise that women are more intuitive, reliable and truthful. After all, women go more into details."

Diligently tasting about 100 cups of coffee a day ("Even if you are just rolling it in your mouth and then spitting it out, it has an effect. For the first one or two months I was really hyper-active") paid off. In two years, she developed a taster's tongue — "you start identifying flavours, and can describe the body, and level of sweetness or bitterness" — and by 1978 she was the head of quality control, holding the post of director at the Coffee Board of India. She is currently Chief Executive of her own company, Coffee Lab Pvt. Ltd, set up in Bangalore, to evaluate Indian coffee, though they do receive beans flown in from other parts of the world too. And, of course, she's an untiring spokesperson for the brew.

"There's a misconception that coffee's a bad habit," She says. "Coffee's good for health, and as the story goes, it has more anti oxidants than tea." In fact, when there was a depression in the coffee market a few years ago, she says Brazil introduced coffee into school lunches, to give children an additional source of nutrition. "Of course, nothing in excess is good. But the recommended amount of coffee is about 5 cups a day, and that's 8 ounces of pure black coffee.' Indian's drink much less, since they add milk and use a far smaller quantity than, for instance, America. "We are basically a tea drinking nation." Indian coffee, however, is getting an increasing amount of attention and applause from the rest of the world. "It has a balanced body and acidity and a very nice flavour." Sunalini helps standardise the quality of Indian green coffee, and develops coffee blends for both domestic and overseas markets. The speciality coffees she's worked on — Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold, Robusta Kaapi Royale and Butter Cup Bold — are now elbowing both domestic and international competition.

Culture and history

Talking about how the people of every country like completely different flavours in their cups, Sunalini says culture and history define what people traditionally drink. "The Turkish brew and then boil their coffee with powdered chocolate and sugar before decanting it. In India, we have the dabba filter," she says, adding, however, that the coffee pub chains are, to a large extent, standardising what people drink, whether it's Starbucks or Coffee Day.

"They've changed how people view coffee. From being an elderly person's drink it's now young and happening," she says, adding that Coffee Day began this trend in India when it opened in Bangalore in 1996. "The idea was to get the young. If they are educated, it will spread even to their family." The method they used was to romanticise coffee.

Sunalini says coffee is incredibly versatile. Coffee can be made into moccachinos, macchiatoes and frappes. Sunalini Menon was in Chennai to speak at the Madras Management Association's Golden Jubilee Women Manager's Convention, 2006.

SHONALI MUTHALALY

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