Mithilesh Vazalwar is very passionate about coffee. He doesn’t need to throw around jargon for you to learn that because his voice and recent effort exudes his love for it. Vazalwar recently became India’s National Barista Champion for 2022, the most prestigious award in the coffee industry in the country. It is also a dream he has toiled and worked towards for the last eight years, when he first began his journey in coffee.
Interestingly, the Nagpur-based barista’s introduction to the beverage came through a combination of his background in sports and finance. He explains, “My journey with coffee started with badminton because I used to travel in and outside the country and drink a lot of it at that time. My question was, ‘How can coffee taste so different in every place’ but I didn’t know if I could pursue something in coffee because there was no roadmap for it.” It took pursuing his Chartered Accountancy and eventually going for a meeting to Australia in 2015 to change his mind. It was there that he saw the coffee culture and realised he wanted to be involved with it.
Winning big
As fate would have it, now that Vazalwar is this year’s barista champion, he is going to represent the country in Melbourne, Australia, next month for the World Barista Championship. With the India championships only just over, ask him if he is taking time off or has already started training and he immediately says, “Yes, I have already started training because there are usually a few months between the two but this time, there is less time. I may go to Australia and train there for at least 20 days,” says Vazalwar, who had earlier trained for 16-18 hours a day, in Dubai, in July before becoming the winner. He is the founder of Nagpur-based Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters, which he started in 2017, and has previously been the head at Blue Tokai Coffee between 2015 – 2017, which has helped in the process. The Nagpurian dons many hats, he is not only a certified Q-grader and coffee roaster but also a trainer and consultant for all things coffee.
Obviously, winning the award wasn’t easy and neither was the whole process cheap but the Nagpur local believes that if he does want to showcase India’s coffee prowess, he wants to do it right and that is why he went all the way. “People wonder, ‘What’s in a coffee championship?’, even for my parents it was the same. But you have to look at it in a different format, if food can have a MasterChef and it is so prestigious, and wine has its own thing, coffee also is a very complex beverage.” In fact, after he was crowned, Vazalwar was actually told by a senior official, that he is actually India’s coffee ambassador, and in that, has a huge responsibility on his shoulders but definitely one that he is not shying away from.
Being a barista in India
In India, for decades, there are only a handful of people who are aware who a barista is and what he does. For the uninitiated, a barista is essentially a person who makes and serves coffee to the public, and can be considered as a `coffee artist`. However, Vazalwar has seen the conversation around that change over the last seven years. “It is humongous and not limited to tier-1 or tier 2 cities but also tier-3 cities where they are talking about roasting coffee, speciality coffee and more,” Vazalwar says. “Earlier, a barista was thought to be a waiter who would serve coffee, make your sandwich hot and that is it.” However, there is a lot more respect now.
This is especially visible in circles where coffee lovers are not only drinking coffee but also discussing its flavour profiles, the right filter to use as well as where to get the best coffee. In fact, they are even brewing their own coffee at home – an elaborate arrangement, that is only done by a person who either has the time or is really passionate about coffee – and that in itself is proof of the changing culture in coffee consumption. “It comes with the understanding that it is tough work and the barista knows how to brew my coffee. So, we have crossed that stage but there is still a long way to go,” he adds.
This very change in the way people perceive the beverage beyond a drink that is actually motivating him to take the conversation further about it. “People have won the championship earlier but there is a reason why more people are paying attention to it now because there is more recognition, and that is something I learn from badminton,” explains Vazalwar, drawing parallels to the sport which has seen the names Pullela Gopichand and Saina Nehwal explode into the scene ten years apart, the latter, which he states is because of more recognition and coverage.
With a head start in the space, the former sportsperson wants to accelerate the movement for coffee in India by encouraging more youngsters to take it up. “We don’t have any reason to believe that India can’t do it. It has some of the finest producers of coffee in the world.” It is also the reason why he feels the country is in the transition phase right now and one that is only going to do well in the future. “When I won, I received so many messages that my phone hanged,” says an elated Vazalwar.
No wonder then, when he says that good coffee can come out of anywhere in India and not one that is limited to the metros. He loves the fact that the award has put Nagpur on the map. “People when they come from want to be shocked and surprised, to say, ‘How can Nagpur have such good coffee?’,” he says. That’s also the goal of his roastery, which actually has a fitting tagline, ‘Dreams don’t see what address they come from’.
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