The $60 Cup: Where Coffee Connoisseurs Are Traveling Now

I'm about twelve years old, standing barefoot in the tiled kitchen of my best friend's Cuban household, witnessing the cafecito ritual. The smell of fried plantains sizzling on the stove comingles with steaming plates of cumin-spiced rice and black beans. For dessert, we will eat cold papaya swimming in syrup. But first, we get to sip real café Cubano from a stovetop moka. The first drops of espresso are vigorously whipped with sugar into a thick espumita froth inside the cup, before the rest is poured in, causing the caramelly-brown foam to rise to the top. It's intensely strong and sweet — and made by the hands of people who escaped Fidel Castro to build a new life. This isn't just caffeine delivery. Getting to participate was to be embraced by this family.

This is how I was made a purist before I knew the word, and have traveled the world recognizing and reveling in coffee pouring ceremonies everywhere from Istanbul to Bushwick. At the high end, this can cost $60 a cup. I wanted to find out how something so beautifully basic could become so expensive.

Brooklyn's $60 Pour-Over

Curiosity led me to café Sey in Bushwick, which serves specialty coffees in a bright, minimalist-industrial space to people hunched over ceramic cups sipping and sniffing "notes" of melon, lime and jasmine. They speak the language of third-wave coffee (the next rung above pumpkin latté shops like Starbucks), which deals in gram scales, micro-lots, extractions, and varietals. The café experience feels like walking into a serious wine-tasting in a cellar, where you pretend you know what you're doing while servers periodically remind you to cleanse your palate.

Barista Lorenzo Mezzatesta, a very generous and knowledgeable guide, walked me through the high end of their menu. The $60 cup is Panamanian, and is typically a "Panama Gesha" or "Finca Sophia." Depending on the year and harvest, these can retail for $40 to $100 a cup, and come in scarce, limited edition shipments. "They were harvested about three or four months ago, and need to go through the roasting process. We're getting some in this fall and winter," says Mezzatesta, manning the counter with practiced precision, like an omakase chef.

This level of pricing is niche, but it's a fast-growing market. Partners Coffee has four brick-and-mortar shops in New York, Hydrangea popped up in California, Aviary Coffee in Cleveland, The Picky Chemist in Belgium, and the sleek newcomer Watchhouse from the UK will open five stores in New York City this year. They're all dependent on traveling "green buyers." A green buyer sources, samples, and purchases unroasted (green) coffee beans, bridging the gap between farmers and retailers. Think of them like brokers who set premium specialty coffee market prices, which are still a part of traditional commodity markets. They just think their coffee tastes better.

How a Cup Gets to $60

The high end is influenced by online auctions where roasters bid up rare and microlot coffees through the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) or the Best of Panama auction. Plain old "commodity" coffee (the raw material) is also more expensive than it used to be. Everything else is perceived value.

• The auction ceiling : a 20-kilo washed Gesha lot from Hacienda La Esmeralda sold for $604,080 — $30,204/kg — at the Best of Panama auction , on a day commodity coffee traded at $2.98/lb. The buyer was Julith Coffee, a Dubai roastery. It's the priciest example, but these are the kind of micro-lots supplying the luxury cafés selling cups for $50–$100.

• The middle-market suckers : 2024–2026 has been the most expensive coffee market in fifty years, with arabica setting a record above $4.37/lb in October 2025, due to high tariffs and climate disruptions in Brazil and Vietnam. Everyone's coffee got more expensive; 'Specialty Roasters' simply created a premium category.

• The takeaway:the $60 cup isn't inflation — it's coffee acquiring a champagne tier, with terroir, auctions, and provenance to match.

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Back at Sey's counter,I order $21.50 worth of Ethiopian Landrace, with a Chiroso chaser from Colombia from David Berrio's farm, La Casita. Evidently these have been "hand-picked at peak ripeness." I drink them black from handmade ceramic bowls, which sit prettily beside laminated cheat-sheets. These colorful cards outline everything from delivery and duty costs to the buyer (to soften the blow?); tasting notes like white honey and key lime; and full descriptions of the origin farms, including the region, altitude, processing technique, date of harvest and the varietal you're drinking.

I can't help but blurt out: What does $60 taste like?! Mezzatesta's answer is a musical metaphor: "Panama is famous for a distinction of florality that few others have; It's a very complex, floral, long finish that stays with you for a while. There's a nice sweetness, nice acidity. And a loudness. Like a great, explosive glass of wine… It's kind of like a melody or a chord where sweetness, acidity, and even a little bit of bitterness occur at the same time. How loud or expressive is the profile? When you're already at that very high level, some coffees have a demonstrative difference. It's in our business to understand and chase that." They know what they're doing; Sey brews Geshas from Panama's Elida Estate, and Elida won Geisha Washed at the Best of Panama 2026.

Across town in Williamsburg, you can get a damn fine cappuccino in the Roman café called " Little Fino " for $5.50, paired with impeccable pistachio cake for $7. It's run by Chef Andrew Carmellini's NoHo Hospitality Group (known for Café Carmellini), so you can expect La Colombe beans served in a polished Italian trattoria style. For sheer taste and value, it's one of the best cups in Brooklyn; La Colombe is one of the few "third wave" coffee movement roasters with low pricing, because they built early and at-scale.

These days, everyone claims ethical sourcing (read: no forced or child labor, which are serious, well-documented problems in the global coffee industry). The travel and time it takes to consistently vet plantations around the globe justifies the high price… or so the argument goes. So, what does plantation labor really look like?

Welcome to Aprocetu, Costa Rica

I visited a remote coffee plantation in the Costa Rican highlands to see for myself. The owner of Aprocetu coffee, Arnoldo Guerrero, runs his farm at an elevation of around 3,000 feet in a cloud forest full of cherries (the whole, fleshy outer fruit that grow on trees). They've had weeks without enough rain in March, but that's not what worries him. It's the heat.

"10 years ago the area was cooler. Now it's harder in the intense heat… Ojo de gallo from humidity," says Guerrero in Spanish. "It's a fungus that can kill coffee leaves," explains Tonny, 29, a first-time tour guide from the neighboring eco-lodge Santa Lucia Jungle Hacienda . During harvest time (December / January), it requires the hands of eight indigenous communities in the surrounding area to hand pick about 240 kilograms per day. Many, Guerrero tells me, are from Venezuela: "The money means more to them, so they come." Drying comes next. Aprocetu farmers rake the entire lot in the sun every hour of daylight. In ideal conditions, it takes 36 hours.

I pick up a rake and get to work in 95 Farenheit; I'm drenched and ready to quit in 10 minutes; "Flavor depends on the sun!" Guerrero says, laughing as I wilt. Only five people actually manage the drying and hand sorting required for quality control; and they roast on-site. The result is a bright, citrusy Arabico called San Isidro, sold mostly in the U.S. One sack of his coffee sells to retailers like Starbucks for about $800 USD, and it's destined to end up in a $7 latte.

Costa Rican Hospitality

Guerrero lives modestly on a dirt road, in a one bedroom house, only reachable on foot or risking mudslides on a motorbike. Pigs grunt and chickens squawk in the mist, laundry is hung out on the line, and air conditioning is non-existent. His son lives next door under a tin roof, pounded out by the tropical rain. His wife welcomes me into their open-air kitchen for coffee and tamal de maicena — homemade milk tarts made with cornstarch, which are unbelievably fresh and delicious. On the raw concrete walls, there are framed and fading pictures of mothers, fathers and children punctuated by wooden Catholic relics. Everyone within a 15 mile radius works for Aprocetu; family bonds bind it together.

As if on cue, Guerrero's 98 year old father hikes up the hill to greet us, with the aid of two walking sticks and a machete hanging from his makeshift belt. He looks remarkably robust, not at all winded from the hike; a broad smile on his weather-worn face. In a gesture of hospitality, father and son cut down sour oranges and green mangoes from high in their trees with machetes. They don't have central plumbing, but they're offering fresh fruit. It feels biblical. And sobering. Costa Rica's system is comparatively protective — ICAFE ensures farmers receive 80% of the FOB [Freight on Board] export price — but that only goes so far. Even in the best-case origin country, the money lives at the roasting-and-ritual end of the chain. Not up in the cloud forests.

How Far Would You Go for the Best Cup?

True coffee connoisseurs typically travel in one of three ways: they're looking for great café culture, they need to meet with origin farmers, or they're attending international coffee championships. This October, for the first time in Latin America, Panama will host the World of Coffee and the World Barista Championship. It's the coffee world's Best in Show moment. Can Eugene Levy narrate ? A slurping competition couldn't get me to an airport. But amazing cafés can.

Because coffee purism isn't really about price point, it's about ritual. It's about culture. And every great café culture pours differently. In Rome, you stand up at an espresso bar and shout for your right to be served, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, bankers elbowing brick layers, everyone jostling together. In Istanbul, grounds brewed in long copper cezves are read to you, like a fortune divined in a cup. In Athens, the finely-ground sediment called katakathi settles to the bottom, each pour heavy and dark, demanding patience and time. The Greeks do the two-hour sidewalk sit better than anyone.

But it's in Brooklyn at Sey where I realize the $60 cup and the $0.60 cups my childhood Cuban friends let me drink are, at their best, the same thing. This is love-as-attention, made drinkable. And I'm always craving more.

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This article was originally published on Forbes.com