Some of us like coffee, and some of us love the stuff, but few of us have it as tightly coded in our DNA as Sanjay Ponnapa. The founder of Wellington-based Fuel Espresso, which recently opened up its first location outside of New Zealand in IFC Mall, is the proud descendant of a coffee-planting dynasty that has been growing beans in India’s noted Coorg region for more than 200 years. “Sundays at our home were always a bit of a coffee ceremony,” says Ponnapa. “There was a stock of an uncle's coffee sitting in the pantry, Mum would roast it in the oven, and Dad would grind and brew it in a South Indian stainless filter pot. Dad worked in the famous India Coffee House on Brigadier Road in Bangalore (it's still there) before going to med school. He’d mix the coffee with ¾ hot milk, add sugar and throw it from one stainless vessel to another to aerate it. As a toddler I'd get a sip, which progressed to a cup when I was seven.”

Ponnapa’s coffee philosophy is simple: use quality, freshly ground and roasted beans, prepared with care by experienced and knowledgeable baristas. He is also a keen believer in continually educating his staff – and through them his customers – in the fine art of coffee appreciation. Indeed, his enthusiasm for discussing his beans and his blends is irrepressible to the point of being infectious.

“To get a particular blend flavour,” he explains in animated fashion, “it’s the same as wine: you pick a certain grape [or bean] and mix it together [with other grapes/beans] to make a particular style. [In our blends] the South American coffee gives balance, smoothness, and roundness, while African coffee has great acidity, and the Indian coffee gives us the body and sweetness, and some of the spicy undertones – it has subtleties of cardamom and pepper, because those are used as intensive crops. In that way coffee is similar to wine, because what’s growing around it imparts flavour.”

So when you taste a cup of Ponnapa’s coffee, be sure to savour it well – after all, it’s been more than two centuries in the making.

Paul Kay

Top coffee spots by district:
Central
Sheung Wan
Causeway Bay & Wan Chai
Tsim Sha Tsui

Profiles:
The Obsessive: Spencer Douglass
The Educator: Sanjay Ponnapa
The Indie Owner: Felix Wong
The Mechanic: Paul Pratt