Everyone loves coffee, but how much is it for your
favourite cup?
Well it depends what sort of coffee you like and where you
buy it of course, but whatever and wherever, you can be
sure that few other basic products have such a massive
variation in price.
Incredibly you can pay from as little as 20p for a 7oz
paper cup of instant coffee from a vending machine, up to
around £4 for a large cappuccino from a speciality
shop.
But where would you expect to find the most expensive cup
of coffee on the planet?
Not surprisingly you need look no further than a country
with a high cost of living and, according to a recent
survey by the London office of U.S. consulting firm
Mercers, if you go to Moscow you will find the average
price is over £6.00 a cup.
Japan, however, is the place for astronomical prices, and
since their rise to economic superpower status, a culture
for high flyers to pay silly prices for unique products has
developed.
One man who has shrewdly exploited his compatriots'
addiction to expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi. Mr
Funakoshi is the proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in
scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles
northwest of Tokyo.
For around £22, he sells one of the world's most
expensive cups of coffee - served as something of a ritual
at a special table by a kimono-clad waitress. Funakoshi
thinks that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a
home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground
for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a
narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style),
but rather the uniquely exorbitant prices that attract
wealthy tourists to his coffee shop.
"People come to Karuizawa with the expectation of spending
money," he says, "so why shouldn't I help them in this
endeavour?"
But the 'honour' of selling the most expensive cup of
coffee in the world belongs much nearer to home - London in
fact. Last year at Peter Jones department store in the West
End you had to pay £50 for a cup of coffee!
Internationally-renowned barista David Cooper created the
coffee, which is a blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the
exclusive Kopi Luwak bean. Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee, is
made from beans eaten, partly digested, and then expelled
by the Indonesian civet cat.
These feline creatures, who inhabit the areas around coffee
plantations, prefer to eat only the ripest and most tasty
coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system break
down the flesh of the fruit and after the animals have
expelled the beans, they are collected from the plantation
floor by workers who then wash away the dung and roast them.
It should be noted however, that all proceeds from the
coffee sales at Peter Jones were donated to Macmillan
Cancer Support.
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For more information about coffee and coffee making
equipment visit http://www.cafebar.co.uk
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