by Lynette Alice

Created on: May 01, 2009

It may surprise many but the world's most expensive types of coffee can be more expensive than a barrel of oil. While that $12 bag of Dunkin' Donuts special blend may seem steep to many, the beans used to make it don't even come close to what some people are paying to get their high end caffeine fix these days. The specialty coffee market has become so big that Forbes magazine estimates it is about an $11 billion dollar a year industry. While many of the world's most expensive coffee's are out of the reach for most people to consider reasonable, knowing what they are sure is fun.

Contrary to popular belief, the most expensive coffee does not hail from Hawaii, Jamaica, or Colombia, but rather from Indonesia. Kopi Luwak is made from coffee cherries that have been eaten palm civets. It is said that the sense of smell possessed by palm civets is so highly developed that they literally sniff out only the ripest most choice beans for their meal which are then hand collected from the jungle floor, separated from the rejects, and then used to make the special blend. The going price is currently $160 per pound.

In second place Panama's hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha blend from Boquete set records when it sold online un-roasted and in bulk for $50 per pound. What the retail price will be is currently unknown, but given the projections for the processing cost and retail mark up it is expected to hit the shelves for no less that about $110 per pound. What supposedly makes this coffee so special is that it is grown in the shade of aged guava trees which provides its unique taste and aroma.

Grown on the Island of St. Helena which is situated some 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa, their signature blend aptly named Island of St. Helena Coffee Company brings in a steady price of $79 per pound. The beans in this blend originally made their way to the island from Yemen in 1730 and was later popularized by Napolean Bonaparte who while in exile there became a big fan of this pricey beverage. Sometime around the 1880's this coffee seemed to disappear, but came back with renewed vigor in the 1990's. As in all cases of demand outpacing supply, it seems as if prices while only continue upward as only about 12 tons of beans are produced each year.

El Injerto coffee from Huehuetenango, Guatemala is another blend which has yet to hit the market but is selling for $25 per pound un-roasted at auction and is expected to fetch over $50 retail once it fully hit's the shelves. In 2006 this blend

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>