Coffee is an item that is loved by many, being grown and consumed across the globe. At the top of the echelon, coffee is a lot like caviar, truffles, or aged Bordeaux. It’s highly sought-after and comes with the promise of a hefty price and often enticing a four-digit per pound rate.
Molokai Coffee: $60 per pound
In many cases, it is priced higher than Kona Coffee, this Hawaiian coffee from the island of Molokai is, perhaps, still gaining celebrity. The business is still moving up, being started by a German retailer in the mid-1800s but not going commercial until the late 1980s. The prized bean here is the red cat which thrives in the volcanic soils of Hawaii and tends to produce rich-tasting notes that work best when it comes to the heavier end range of roasting. Find “Molokai prime” on the label, which means you’re getting the good stuff.
Saint Helena: $145 per pound
Produced on the small and somewhat obscure Island of Saint Helena in the south Atlantic, this coffee is rare and coveted. It comes from a speck on the planet and is a British territory from which Napoleon was eventually banished. In this region, bourbon beans with a green tip control the land imported by Yemen (fittingly from Mocha, the port city that is also called Mocha). This is known as the Pinot noir coffee of the world. This variety is difficult to cultivate as well as process and is revered for its nuances and delicacy. Starbucks stole the headlines back in 2016 when it introduced some coffee from Saint Helena beans, hitting special aisles for around $80 for an 8.8-ounce bag.
This coffee blend is especially loved around the Equator, if you are living in the Equator you can use coffee subscription services to get this coffee on your doorstep with special discounts available.
Finca El Injerto: $500 per pound
This Guatemalan coffee is cultivated in an altitude of over 5,500ft above the sea. It comes from a single farm of coffee transferred from what was as a sugarcane field. Micro lots of this coffee often go to auction and fetch prices to the value of over $500 per pound. Much like Kona as well as some of the other highly regarded coffee brands in the world, Finca El Injerto is often featured on roaster’s labels but isn’t always made with the finest coffee from this Central American pocket (or, at most, a small portion of what goes into the package).
Kopi Luwak: $600 per pound
A highly prized Indonesian technique for making high-end coffee. Kopi Luwak is the name of the process of elevating the beans to such an expensive territory. The coffee cherries ferment as they go through the civet cat that’s native to tropical forests. Apart from the chemical modifications that the cat’s stomach causes on the beans (something top roasters wax poetic about often) There is a belief that the civet also has an eye for the most desirable of beans, and will only eat the finest of the lot. What’s yielded is an extremely expensive coffee that’s unlike anything else and, at a minimum, is unique in its place of where it came from. It’s worth noting that there’s a lot of fraud involved with this particular coffee as well and producers keep playing using beans that have passed through other animal species to get something distinctive in the cup.
Black Ivory
$1,500 per pound was pretty certain that nothing with ivory as a name is cheap. This particular coffee originates from northern Thailand and routinely hits the $1500-per-pound threshold. Like many expensive teas (see above) this process is not always appetizing. These beans go through the stomachs of elephants, in which they are activated by a particular group of enzymes that allow the beans to become extremely smooth and flavorful. It’s a complicated process that produces only a handful of whole beans because the elephants tend to degrade them. The result, though, is a special product, widely viewed as both the most expensive and prized coffee on planet e