Would you pay £50 for a cup of coffee?
It sounds ridiculous but one posh coffee house swears it’s worth every bean. INDIA STURGIS cuts through the froth...
When times are tough, it’s the little luxuries we relish. In which case, Queens of Mayfair might be on to something by offering a £50 cup of coffee.
The 15g of ethiopian beans — which make slightly more than a Starbucks short cup serving — are so expensive a £25 deposit is required on booking at the London cafe.
At least part of the reason for the high cost is the rarity of the beans, which won the 2020 Cup of excellence, a sort of Strictly Come Dancing for coffee suppliers globally.
Only two UK businesses — Difference Coffee Co (which supplies Queens of Mayfair) and harrods — were invited to bid for the exclusive batch at auction, which would retail at £2,000 per kilo.
Winning farmer nigussie Gemeda Mude grows his crop in a threehectare area of the Sidama region of ethiopia and has a limited haul of 270kg. And 225g of his beans have filtered down to Queens of Mayfair, equivalent to 15 cups of coffee. When I call to book, six have already been sold in 24 hours.
But is it really worth £50? Only a tasting can answer this.
So it is that I find myself on a splendidly immaculate Mayfair street sitting in front of a beautifully ridged crystal goblet and feeling like a fish out of water.
ELIA CORDARO, a senior barista at the recently opened artisan coffee shop, painstakingly weighs out the coffee beans, grinds them in a precise titanium mill (from Comandante, £205, if you’re into that sort of thing), dampens some filter paper to stop the coffee tasting of the paper ( which would be a slap in the face, says elia) and delicately pours 250ml of water heated to 94c over the coffee for no more than two and a half minutes.
This is so as not to scorch the coffee or extract too much of it, which leads to bitterness.
he stops midway to allow something called a bloom — the bubbly, fast release of carbon dioxide that happens when ground coffee comes into contact with hot water — and which prevents sourness. I feel like I’m in both a chemistry class and theatre performance. Finally, a glass is filled.
I swill then smell it. The aroma is like that of watery tea but the taste is clean and bright. And I like it. elia describes the brew as having hints of peach and apricot and subtle almond. Satsumas, I say hopefully? Maybe, he says, generously.
The fact is I can barely tell the difference between a cappuccino and a flat white, which is why I’ve brought along Bertie Sewell, coffee trader for Olam, a major food and agri-business company. he holds up the glass to the light and sips then slurps the coffee to the back of his throat, a technique to accentuate flavour. he gets a fruity, floral flavour profile.
It’s lovely, but still, £50? I’m not sure.
‘That’s because the series of processes and requirements from a truly good cup of coffee are not well understood,’ explains Sewell, patiently.
‘Think about what you spend on excellent wine. It’s the same for speciality coffee, which has many more flavour compounds and a complex value chain.
‘Great beans require hand-picking, washing properly, drying properly ( constant turning); they must be exported within time and under exact conditions.
‘They require fermentation; roasting, which caramelises the beans and develops a whole other profile of flavour, then a barista must make it to a certain standard.
‘The whole chain is reliant on one another to make amazing coffee. It’s worth it because of the journey it has gone on and the expertise needed to brew it to perfection.’
There is also a drive to decommodify good coffee and pay those producing it more fairly.
For example, nigussie Gemeda Mude, the ethiopian Cup of excellence producer, rightly received full auction price as part of a fair-trade deal.
So maybe outrageously expensive coffee is actually a good thing?
I’m almost convinced.