Toraja Coffee: a Rich Taste of the Highlanders

What's a highlander good at? Sword fighting? Nah, that's Christopher Lambert (1957-...) in his old movie back in the late 80's, depicting an immortal Scottish Highland warrior.

In South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, the highlanders of Tana Toraja prefer a peaceful way of life. And among others, they are good at cultivating Coffea arabica. The rich taste of that black liquid called Toraja coffee is well known all over the world.

Toraja coffee tends to have a relatively low-toned yet vibrant acidity. Among arabica coffee beans, those cultivated in Toraja has a very distinguished personality, in terms of its full bodied taste paired with caramelized and unique aroma. It generally display nutty or warm spice notes, like cinnamon or cardamom. It also gives a crisp and clean aftertaste.

Such distinct coffee flavor owes to the earth characteristic and the other vegetation of Tana Toraja. The trees are commonly grown at 1,100 - 1,500 meters above sea level, while the premium ones are cultivated at 1,600 - 1,800 meters above sea level.

However, most coffee plantations in Toraja are small-scale family farms, with only about 5% of total production cropped from seven larger estates. Coffee shrubs are planted near their houses, which provides supplemental income.

Each household processes their own coffee after harvesting. Traditional and manual methods are still applied. Coffee cherry pulping process is done with small machine, or simply by crushing them with a board. Fermentation process is done in buckets or bags for a day, to break down the fruity mucilage layer, and then washed and stored in clean water buckets. The parchment coffee is then dried under the sun for a few hours, before farmer can sell them to collector during market day.

Local farmer drying coffee beans, with the background of tongkonan (Toraja's traditional house). 

The green coffee bean then delivered to a larger mill. It can go straight to the wet-hulling process, or further dried under the sun to reduce the moist before hulling.When the hulling, grading, and sorting process are done, the coffee beans are packed to be shipped across the globe.

Now, the roasting process can be done somewhere in Seattle or anywhere else in the world. Some say that the best flavor from Toraja coffee beans will come out after roasting them just up to the 2nd crack, when the brown-greenish color still visible.

As for the brewing, any kind of methods will do just fine. And, if you prefer to add stuffs to your black coffee, you might as well experiment with the rich taste base of Toraja coffee.

Where it comes from...

Map of Indonesia, that's South Sulawesi Province highlighted in red.

Tana Toraja is a Regency in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The mountainous region is 300 km away from Makassar, the province's capital. Tana Toraja means Land of Toraja. And, the word Toraja itself derived from to-riaja, local term for people of the highland.

There is no proper literature explaining how coffee seeds first arrived in Tana Toraja, and when did the local inhabitants start cultivating coffee. However, it was the Dutch colonial government who discovered the fertile soil for coffee in the southern part of Sulawesi, and establishing a 300 hectares coffee plantation under the name of Kalosi Celebes Coffee (Celebes is an old name of Sulawesi).

The coffee plantation business was abandoned during the war for Indonesian independence. And after the establishment of the Republic in 1945, the new nation-state was incapable to boost the business back.

An old Japan telephone card designed to promote Toraja coffee, sold on e-bay as collector's item.

The re-birth of Toraja coffee industry was marked in 1973, when a Japanese coffee company explored the region and observed the remaining of Dutch colonial era coffee plantation.The Japanese investors help building the necessary infrastructure for the Toraja coffee to be marketed worldwide (again). So, it is natural that Japanese may also took pride in Toraja coffee.