The Most Expensive Coffee in the World: A Price Ranking

Coffee is one of the most popular drinks on Earth. Millions of people enjoy a cup every day. However, there is an elite world of coffee beans that retail for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per kilogram.

Luxury coffee is valued for its rarity, exotic processing methods, and limited availability. Some of the rarest coffees in the world go through a fermentation process in animals. Other expensive beans are grown at higher altitudes or have unusual flavour notes.

Let’s discover the most expensive coffee in the world, ranked by price.

Here is a list of some of the rarest coffee beans that you can buy. Note that prices may vary due to harvests, auctions, and availability. However, these speciality coffees are consistently among the most expensive coffees you can buy.

1. Black Ivory Coffee – World’s Most Expensive Coffee

Price: up to £2,251.20/kg

Black Ivory coffee is one of the rarest coffees on Earth. Only a few pounds are produced each year in Thailand. It is made using a fermentation process that involves elephants. Elephants are fed high-quality coffee cherries, which they digest before defecating. Inside the elephant’s digestive system, proteins that cause bitterness are broken down by enzymes. 

After beans are harvested from elephant dung, they are cleaned and roasted.

Since about 33 lbs of cherry coffee are needed to produce one lb of Black Ivory coffee beans, production is limited. Black Ivory coffee beans are known for their smooth, chocolate flavour with little bitterness.

This coffee is served at luxury hotels around the world and is a rare delicacy, even for coffee enthusiasts.

2. Ospina Gran Café – Colombia’s Heirloom Coffee

Price: up to £1,051/lb

Colombia is known for producing high-quality coffee beans. However, the Ospina family has been growing and harvesting premium coffee beans since the 1800s. Their special coffee is called Ospina Gran Café and is extremely expensive. The beans for this heirloom coffee are grown in rich volcanic soil at high elevations. As such, they have rich flavour complexity and notes of caramel, chocolate, and fruit.

The high price reflects Ospina’s limited production capacity and close attention to processing. Each harvest lot is individually selected to ensure the highest quality coffee beans.

Ospina Gran Café is a favourite among collectors and coffee aficionados worldwide.

3. Kopi Luwak – Indonesia’s Civet Coffee

Price: £450.24/lb (can cost much more)

Kopi Luwak coffee may be the most well-known coffee on this list. Also known as civet coffee, this coffee comes from Indonesia and uses a very unique processing technique.

Coffee beans are fermented in the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet. After feeding on coffee cherries, civets naturally select the ripest beans. Once the beans pass through the digestive system, they are washed, roasted, and made into coffee. Since Kopi Luwak was propelled to international fame, questions about the ethics of harvesting beans from civets have arisen.

Ethical, wild-sourced Kopi Luwak is still hard to come by and very expensive. However, farmed versions of the coffee have become much more common.

4. Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha Coffee

Price: £262.64/lb (can sell for thousands per pound at auction)

Hacienda La Esmeralda is a Panamanian coffee farm that has risen to fame among speciality coffee drinkers. It often sells for thousands of dollars per pound at auction.

But why is Geisha coffee so expensive? Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha coffee isn’t expensive because of its processing method. In fact, it is processed the same way as many other high-quality coffees.

It is expensive because the coffee bean itself is extremely rare. Geisha coffee is a variety of bean that was first discovered in Ethiopia.

These beans are known for their delicate flavour with floral, citrus, and jasmine notes. Hacienda La Esmeralda helped make Geisha coffee popular when it started winning coffee competitions. Nowadays you can commonly find Geisha coffee from Panama on the list of most expensive coffees.

5. Finca El Injerto Peaberry Coffee

Price: up to £375.20/lb

Finca El Injerto Peaberry is another high-end coffee that comes from Guatemala. As mentioned above, peaberry coffee beans are round rather than split into halves.

Since only one coffee bean develops in the coffee cherry, they are less common. Finca El Injerto sources these beans and sorts through them to find peaberries. The result is a coffee with rich chocolate notes that highlight the smooth texture and balanced acidity of the bean.

Peaberry coffee beans have a lower yield than normal beans. As such, this rare coffee sells for high prices on the market.

6. Saint Helena Coffee – Napoleon’s Favourite

Price: £108.81/lb

Saint Helena Coffee is sourced from an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The island is most famous as the exile home of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is said that he drank coffee while living there.

Saint Helena produces only small amounts of coffee each year. As such, the coffee is highly rare and expensive. Bright and fruity in flavour, it is loved by collectors and enthusiast drinkers.

7. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee

Price: £105.06/lb

Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee is another staple name for expensive coffee. The Jamaican Blue Mountains are ideal for growing coffee for many reasons.

High elevation, rich soil, heavy rain, and cool temperatures lead to mild coffee with less bitterness. The acidic quality of the beans is also more balanced than other coffee. Blue Mountain coffee cannot be produced just anywhere. There are strict rules that guarantee coffee labelled as Blue Mountain is authentic.

Since production is limited by strict quality control, the coffee sells for a higher price.

Why Is Coffee So Expensive?

Like anything rare, some coffee is expensive because it’s just hard to come by. There are a few factors that lead to rare, expensive coffee.

1. Supply and Demand

Coffee production can be limited due to rare conditions. Many expensive coffee beans are harvested in small areas and with limited supplies. Some varieties of coffee, such as Geisha coffee, are also less common than other beans.

2. Processing

Many of the luxury coffees on this list use unusual processing methods. While they produce interesting flavour profiles, these methods prevent producers from creating large amounts of coffee.

3. Flavour

Coffee flavour varies greatly depending on the bean, where it was grown, and how it was roasted. Brighter, fruit-forward coffee flavours are considered gourmet. High-quality beans tend to have complex flavours that take years to perfect.

4. Auctions

Many speciality coffee beans are sold at auction to the highest bidder. As buyers fight over the rarest coffee beans, prices can skyrocket.

Are Expensive Coffees Worth It?

This all depends on who you ask. If you typically drink instant coffee from a can, expensive beans will seem outrageous. However, many speciality coffee drinkers crave rare coffee every year.

Coffee can be compared to wine or whisky. The rarity of expensive coffee is part of what makes it so attractive to connoisseurs.