For most coffee drinkers, Sri Lanka is synonymous with tea. For more than a century, the country's steep mountain landscapes have been defined by endless rows of tea bushes, earning Ceylon tea worldwide recognition. Coffee rarely enters the conversation, and most people wouldn’t even know that it grows there.
However, long before tea became Sri Lanka's identity, coffee was its future. This release marks the next chapter of that story.
This Unfamiliar Origins coffee comes from the Kotmale Valley in Sri Lanka's central highlands, where Soul Coffee Group is working with more than 300 smallholder farming families to rebuild an industry that was almost completely lost. Together with Project Origin, they're proving that Sri Lanka's coffee story didn't end in the nineteenth century – it was simply waiting to begin again.
The coffee island that became a tea island
Coffee has been grown in Sri Lanka for centuries, but it was under British rule during the nineteenth century that production expanded dramatically. By the 1860s, then known as Ceylon, the island had become one of the largest coffee producers in the world, exporting around 100 million pounds of coffee annually.
Then in 1869, everything changed. Coffee leaf rust (or la roya) arrived on the island, and vast plantations planted in full sun proved especially vulnerable. Over the following decades the disease devastated production, and farmers gradually replaced coffee with tea – a crop that proved better suited to the changing conditions and quickly became the country's defining export.
Over time, coffee didn’t disappear entirely; small pockets survived beneath forest canopies, where shade offered greater resilience against disease. Those surviving trees quietly preserved Sri Lanka's coffee heritage while the rest of the world came to know the country almost exclusively through tea.
Rediscovering forgotten potential
Today, the history of Sri Lankan coffee is beginning to come full circle. Across the Kotmale Valley, Soul Coffee Group is leading a new generation of coffee production, working directly with more than 300 smallholder farming families to establish a sustainable specialty coffee industry.
Their focus extends well beyond producing exceptional coffee. Through farmer training, premium cherry pricing and continued investment in nurseries and replanting, they're rebuilding coffee as a long-term opportunity for rural communities.
Project Origin and ONA Coffee founder, Saša Šestić have been working alongside the team, sharing knowledge on varieties, processing and quality improvement. Rather than recreating the past, the goal is to help establish a modern specialty coffee industry that reflects Sri Lanka's unique growing conditions while embracing contemporary processing techniques.
For us, that's what makes this coffee so exciting. This isn't simply a new or unfamiliar origin to most people – it's the first glimpse of an origin being brought back to life.
A modern expression of Sri Lankan coffee
Produced from the S09 variety in the nutrient-rich soils of the Kotmale Valley at around 1,200 metres above sea level, the cherries mature slowly in the cool mountain climate, allowing sugars and flavour compounds to develop over an extended growing season.
After careful hand harvesting, the cherries undergo a 72-hour Anaerobic Natural fermentation in sealed tanks. Throughout fermentation, the Soul team closely monitors both pH and Brix, allowing them to guide microbial activity and produce consistent, expressive results.
The process encourages naturally occurring yeasts before shifting towards anaerobic microorganisms, creating remarkable complexity while maintaining clarity in the cup.
It's a processing philosophy that many coffee drinkers will recognise from coffees that have emerged through Project Origin over the past decade. Here, those techniques are being applied in an entirely new landscape, revealing flavour potential that has remained largely unexplored.
The result is a vibrant cup with notes of orange and dried plums, layered with the rich sweetness of cocoa that lingers long after the final sip.
Why unfamiliar origins matter
One of the reasons we created the Unfamiliar Origins series was to challenge our own assumptions about where exceptional coffee can come from.
Countries that dominate specialty coffee today weren't always recognised for quality. Many have earned that reputation through decades of investment, experimentation and collaboration between producers, exporters, roasters and consumers.
Sri Lanka is now beginning – or rediscovering – its own coffee journey. By supporting coffees like this, we're not simply exploring somewhere new; we're helping create demand for producers willing to invest in quality, rewarding the work of farming families rebuilding an industry, and sharing stories that might otherwise remain untold.
This coffee offers a rare opportunity to experience an origin that almost disappeared from coffee history, and one that is quietly writing an exciting new future. We hope it's only the beginning.
Learn more about the Unfamiliar Origins series and this coffee from the Soul Coffee Group here: https://onacoffee.com.au/products/unfamiliar-origin-sri-lanka-special-release-milkcoffee