Ingredients · Flavouring

Coffee

Coffea arabica, C. canephora · Rubiaceae (madder family)

Coffee
Roasted coffee beans, in a tea blend. Three products carry them, including one with decaf beans. It is an unusual thing to do and it works for a specific reason: coffee's roasted bitterness sits underneath a black tea the way cocoa does, and it makes a latte-style blend taste like a café drink rather than a flavoured tea. One practical note — roast level makes almost no difference to caffeine. The difference between a light and a dark roast is only about 0.1 per cent.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partSeed
KindFlavouring
CaffeineContains caffeine — about 1.2 per cent in the dry bean, and robusta 40 to 50 per cent more than arabica
Where it is fromBrazil, Vietnam (production); Ethiopia (native)
TasteRoasted and bitter with a dark caramel depth; it sits under a black tea the way cocoa does

How to use it

Steeped along with the tea. Because the beans are whole, they give up much less than ground coffee would, which is the point — the blend tastes of coffee without becoming coffee. In a dessert blend, with caramel or vanilla.

With food

Cream and milk. Chocolate. Caramel and toffee. Vanilla. Hazelnut. Cardamom. Orange.

With spices

Cardamom, in the Arabic tradition. Cinnamon. Vanilla. Chicory. Nutmeg.

With tea

Black tea and pu-erh, which is where this shop puts it.

Its story

Where it comes from

Coffea arabica, the more highly regarded species, is native to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, the Boma Plateau in southeastern Sudan and Mount Marsabit in northern Kenya. Brazil led world production in 2023 with 31 per cent, then Vietnam, Indonesia, Colombia and Ethiopia. Our lots name no origin or roast.

What happened

The famous origin story is not true, or at least not old. The tale of the goatherd who noticed his goats dancing after eating the berries does not appear before 1671, and the name Kaldi seems to be a twentieth-century invention. The credible history begins in Yemen: by the late fifteenth century coffee drinking was well established among Sufi communities there, who used it to stay awake through night prayers. From there it went into the Ottoman world — the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened in 1555 in Tahtakale — and then to Europe, where it arrived under suspicion until Pope Clement VIII declared it a Christian beverage in 1600. It had spread to Italy by that year and across the continent after.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

Explore

Other ways in

Ingredients Every plant, seed, bark and salt in the shop on one page — what it is, why it is in the blend, and where it comes from. See them all Collections Every shelf in the shop on one page — teas by leaf and flavour, spices by kind and cuisine. Open any shelf to see what is on it. Browse the shelves The Showroom The whole shop on one floor — every tea, spice and blend, filtered by what you are after, with the basket beside you. Open the Showroom Elsewhere Short trips — a place, a moment, a feeling — each with the teas and spices that get you there. Take a trip