illy coffee: It starts and ends with soil
Within the pastoral grounds of the Borde Hill Estate, Michelin green star chef and illy UK chef ambassador Chantelle Nicholson is quietly building something special.
When boarding a southbound train from London, the myriad pastoral destinations one could encounter span the entirety of the South. From the undulating Kent coastline to the rolling Surrey Hills, perhaps to the South Downs, the beaches just beyond, or the vastly flat High Weald National Landscape.
Such features of Southern England make for particularly romantic imagery, and indeed on the edges of Haywards Heath – between the Ardingly Reservoir and the residential village of Cuckfield – lies the picturesque Borde Hill Estate, West Sussex.
The estate spans some 110 acres of pasture and parkland and was founded by King Henry VIII botanist and herbalist Andrew Borde. The mansion house, which stands to this day in vast Tudor splendour, was built in 1598 by Borde’s grandson Stephen.
Today, the ancient Borde Hill Garden has some newer green shoots in the form of chef Chantelle Nicholson. Nicholson is one of the few chefs in the UK to have gained a Michelin green star at her London restaurant Apricity. Alongside this, she is illy coffee’s UK‘s chef ambassador. Nicholson’s project, dubbed The Cordia Collective, is slowly overhauling some of the Borde Hill estate, beginning – suitably enough – with the micro-bakery, Baked by Cordia.
A restaurant, larger café, wine bar, workshop and bakery will follow, as will expansive market gardens and functional green spaces with a focus on soil health and regeneration.
The existing garden café, Gloriette, is discovered down a winding path, lined in late springtime with wild garlic, blooming flowers, and chirping Dunnocks and Finches. The yellow-hued café is concise; its kitchen sits across the way in the former Peacock house.
Beyond, the chimney tops of the main Borde Hill house can be seen and in the café courtyard, a handful of tables accommodate both the eagerly green-fingered and more broadly florally-conscious visitors to this most bucolic of gardens.
Chantelle’s role is as much custodian as it is chef and her work with illy perfectly embodies this. Illy’s Brazil Arabica Selection, Nicholson's choice of coffee, is the first 100% certified regenerative coffee in the market. For any truly conscious steward, soil health, regeneration, circularity in agriculture and a closed-loop ecosystem play increasingly important roles in the life-cycle of hospitality operations.
It starts and ends with soil. Chantelle speaks at impassioned lengths of the virtues of healthy and well-nourished soil, values shared by illy. Good soil is well aerated, nourished with nitrates, vitamins, minerals, supplemented by the addition of composted food waste – things like vegetable peels and crushed egg shells – and of course, used coffee grounds. A regular supply of which the café is only too happy to offer.
Healthy soil, in turn, breeds life and abundant plants. Springtime blossoms of magnolias that sprout with fresh citric air and in May, wild garlic blooms across the grounds.
In turn, that which grows in the burgeoning kitchen and market gardens will feed a steady supply of produce into the restaurant's kitchen and the café, thus feeding and nourishing the guests who continue to visit and support.
It’s this kind of closed-loop, regeneratively conscious agriculture that reflects illy coffee and Chantelle’s role as illy UK Chef Ambassador. The better nourished the soil, the better nourished the produce, and the better nourished the produce, the more delicious it is.
The use of regenerative agriculture is nothing new, it is a most ancient and – for a while – most widely used agricultural method. It’s only in the last few hundred years of mass agricultural commercialisation that we find industrial processes being applied which, over time, reduce soil health and affect the nutrition of the very produce the soil is attempting to grow.
In efforts to grow the very best produce, with the most delicious flavour, both Chantelle and illy prioritise soil health. The farmers in Brazil who grow the specific Arabica selection beans have been certified at 100% organic for these practices. As at Borde Hill, the outcome is a crop of well nourished, delicious produce. Coffee cherries which burst with fully grown seeds at their very peak, creating the best-quality final product.
As The Cordia Collective blooms this year, the market garden will continue to grow.
While June will see the arrival of beans, courgettes, and gooseberries, summer months bring wild strawberries, tomatoes and abundant greens, before autumn and winter arrive with their harvest of apples, brassicas, squash and plenty more besides.
The greater the soil nourishment the greater the likelihood of these diverse plants and vegetables thriving. It is the same core logic that applies across the board in regenerative agriculture and in coffee specifically: the healthier the soil, the better the output of what grows in that soil.
And this ultimately is why The Cordia Collective matters. The breadth of produce currently being grown in Britain has never been stronger, but poor soil health risks damaging the very food systems upon which we all rely. What Chantelle is attempting to achieve with The Cordia Collective, as chef and custodian, is to ensure soil health for generations to come.
Beyond that: the soil will ultimately provide a diverse range of sustainable produce for what will undoubtedly be one of the UK‘s most important new restaurant openings. Because it starts, and ends, with soil.
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