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The dallah is the traditional Arabic coffee pot, with a bulbous base, a pinched waist, a flared rim, a tall spire lid, and a long crescent spout. Its shape settled around the mid 17th century, and the wide base drew heat from the embers while the narrow waist held it in. Everyday dallahs are brass or steel, finer ones silver, and some made for royalty or major occasions are solid 24 karat gold, hand hammered and engraved with geometric, floral, or poetic designs. The spout is usually left open so everyone can watch and smell the pour.

The pot grew out of Bedouin desert hospitality, where a host served coffee to a stranger before asking their name or business, and the custom spread across the Levant and North Africa. The brew uses very lightly roasted beans boiled for 10 to 20 minutes with crushed cardamom and sometimes saffron, served unfiltered in small handleless cups. Across the Gulf Cooperation Council states the dallah stands for national heritage, and it now appears on coins, on giant roundabout monuments, and as electric and thermos versions.

• The host holds the dallah in the left hand and the cup in the right, pouring only a quarter to a third of a cup.
• Guests signal they have had enough by shaking the cup side to side.
• Light roast beans are dense enough to take a long boil without the harsh bitterness a dark roast would release.
• Giant dallah monuments stand in traffic roundabouts in cities including Doha and Riyadh.
• The episode cites the dallah as a banknote watermark, since its complex curves are hard to forge.

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Tchibo was founded in 1949 in war damaged Hamburg by Max Herz and Carl Tchilinghiryan, its name a blend of Tchilinghiryan and Bohnen, the German word for beans. It began as a mail order roaster shipping fresh beans through the post, which built the distribution muscle behind its later model: every week a new world. Alongside coffee, its shops and the roughly 22,000 Frischdepots it had placed in bakeries and supermarkets by 2002 sell a rotating range of clothing, furniture, and electronics that disappears after seven days, turning a coffee run into a treasure hunt.

The cash funded bets far from coffee: shares in Nivea maker Beiersdorf in 1977 and majority control of cigarette producer Reemtsma in 1980, sold to Imperial Tobacco in 2002 for 5.2 billion euros. A 1986 video game console flopped, but buying rival Eduscho in 1997 gave Tchibo 20% of the German coffee market. The model failed in Britain, where a trade publication called it a dressed up discount store and the shops closed in 2009. Today parent company maxingvest is owned by three members of the Herz family.

• In 2006 Tchibo sold the Davidoff cigarette brand to Imperial Tobacco for 540 million euros but kept Davidoff Café.
• The UK retreat shrank its board from 11 directors to four and pulled concessions out of Somerfield and Sainsbury's in late 2008.
• Tchibo returned to the UK online in 2016 and bought the Scottish roaster Matthew Algie the same year.
• After the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Tchibo stopped roasting and marketing in Russia and sold its subsidiary there.
• In 2003 Ingeburg, Michael, and Wolfgang Herz bought out siblings Günter and Daniela, consolidating control.

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In August 2025 a lot of Panama Geisha sold for more than $13,700 per pound, over $30,000 a kilogram. That price rests on a grading system, not a buzzword. Erna Knutsen used the term specialty coffee in a 1974 issue of the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, arguing that beans from distinct microclimates had flavors mass blending destroyed. Today the Specialty Coffee Association scores coffee on a 100 point scale: 80 to 84.99 is very good, 85 to 89.99 excellent, and 90 to 100 outstanding, and anything under 80 cannot be called specialty.

The physical bar is just as strict. A 350 gram sample of green beans may contain no more than five defects, since a chipped or insect damaged bean can burn or sour a whole roast. Geisha grown high on Panama's volcanic slopes ripens slowly and packs in sugars and acids, and because every harvest differs, the best lots behave more like wine vintages than commodity blends. The episode then follows the global boom and a push to add environmental and social measures to what counts as quality.

• Specialty lots must be selectively hand picked, taking only fully mature cherries.
• A biologist leading the NGO Seven Elements Peru argues no coffee should be called outstanding if its farming harms land or workers.
• An SCA estimate counted fewer than 3,000 US specialty shops in 1993 and nearly 30,000 by 2013.
• Western European coffee consumption shrank slightly in the mid 2010s while specialty cafés grew by double digits.
• Brazil's domestic coffee consumption is now close behind the United States, and the specialty market is projected to top $152 billion by 2030.

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Kahlúa tastes like strong coffee, yet a standard 1.5 ounce pour holds only about five milligrams of caffeine, measured at roughly 100 parts per million. The liqueur was created in 1936 in Veracruz, Mexico, by Pedro Domecq, who blended rum from local sugar cane, raw sugar, and local arabica coffee. He named it with a Nahuatl word meaning House of the Acolhua people, tying a new product to an older regional identity. In the United States, importer Jules Berman sold it so tirelessly that he became known as Mr. Kahlúa.

The bottle has changed far more than its label suggests. Kahlúa started at 26.5% alcohol, dropped to 20% in 2004, and in 2021 fell to 16% in the UK and Canada with a new bottle, while the US kept the 20% version. Going the other way, Kahlúa Especial launched in 2002 as a duty free exclusive at 36%, with 100% Veracruz arabica and less room for syrup. Behind all of it sits a chain of mergers that ended with Pernod Ricard, the world's largest spirits distributor.

• A typical eight ounce cup of brewed coffee can carry up to 200 milligrams of caffeine, about 40 times a Kahlúa pour.
• The episode argues the roasted aroma sets up a conditioned expectation of a buzz that the liqueur never delivers.
• Especial won three silver medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition from 2005 to 2007 and a bronze in 2009.
• Kahlúa's density lets it sit at the bottom of a layered B-52 shot beneath Irish cream and orange liqueur.
• The Domecq company merged with Allied Lyons in 1994, Pernod Ricard acquired part of it in 2005, and a 2008 deal with Vin & Sprit followed.

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Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is grown on a single island yet more than 80% of it ships to one country, Japan. Coffee reached Jamaica in 1728, and the Blue Mountain bean is Typica, an arabica lineage from the highlands of southwestern Ethiopia. The Blue Mountains, between Kingston and Port Antonio, rise to 7,402 feet and are wrapped in a cool mist that gives them their name. That mist, heavy rain, and fast draining volcanic soil slow the cherries' ripening, building denser beans with complex sugars and a famously mild, low bitterness cup.

To protect that profile, the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority limits the Blue Mountain mark to the highest elevations of four parishes: St. Andrew, St. Thomas, Portland, and St. Mary. The Japan connection dates to January 9, 1967, when a shipment carrying 60% of that year's harvest left Kingston bound for Japan, meeting a palate shaped by delicate teas and the kissaten coffee shop boom. Japan later made January 9 Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee Day, and Jamaica launched its own coffee festival in the mountain settlement of Newcastle.

• Coffee grown between 1,500 and 3,000 feet in the same parishes is sold as Jamaica High Mountain, and lower beans as Jamaica Supreme or Low Mountain.
• Beans are graded one, two, and three by size and defects, with round single seed peaberries as their own prized class.
• The Blue Mountain name is a geographical indication protected in the United States, the European Union, and the UK, much like Champagne.
• The Blue Mountain Coffee Day motion came from the Association of Japanese Importers of Jamaican Coffee in December 2018, and celebrations began in 2019.
• After a 2020 cancellation and a virtual 2021 edition, the festival returned in 2022 as a month long event with farmer workshops and buyer matchmaking.

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In Italy, adding a splash of liquor to a perfectly pulled espresso is called correcting it. The caffè corretto is a single espresso with a small pour of spirit, most often grappa, the fiery pomace brandy distilled from grape skins, seeds, and stalks left over from winemaking, though sambuca and brandy are common too. The high proof alcohol acts as a solvent on the crema, the emulsion of oils and carbon dioxide that traps aroma, releasing those volatile compounds just as the cup reaches your nose. Grappa sharpens the roasted, earthy side of the coffee, while sambuca brings its own sugar and anise.

Many bars serve the spirit in a separate shot glass so the drinker decides how much to add, turning the dose into a choice about the kind of day you are having. Linguists call corretto a phraseme, a phrase whose cultural meaning has outgrown its literal one. In the Veneto the ritual gains a second act: after finishing the coffee, drinkers pour grappa into the empty cup, swirl it to lift the sugar and coffee residue from the porcelain, and drink it as a final shot.

• The espresso itself is pulled at nine bars of pressure at around 90 degrees Celsius.
• Sambuca lets the drinker add sweetener and aromatic lift in a single pour.
• The Veneto rinse takes its dialect name from the word for rinsing, and it works like deglazing a pan.
• Grappa began as a peasant drink meant to waste nothing from the grape harvest.
• The rinse turns a 30 second stand-up espresso into a slower two part ritual.

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In Ethiopia and Eritrea, coffee can take two hours and you cannot opt out: decline the coffee and you will likely be handed tea and still be expected to stay. The host, usually the matriarch, first transforms the room by scattering freshly cut grass and flowers across the floor, and around the Meskel holiday in late September those flowers are the yellow Adey Abeba daisies that bloom at the end of the rainy season. Green beans are washed and roasted in a flat pan over a charcoal brazier, and the host carries the smoking pan around the room so guests can breathe in the aroma.

The roasted beans are pounded by hand in a wooden mortar called a mukecha, whose thumping works as a signal to the neighbors, and the uneven grind gives the brew its heavy body. The coffee boils in the round bottomed jebena, is poured from about a foot high in one unbroken stream into small handleless cups, and is brewed from the same grounds three times. Frankincense or myrrh smolders throughout, and in the countryside guests often season their cups with salt or spiced clarified butter instead of sugar.

• The three rounds are called abol, tona, and baraka in Amharic, and baraka means blessing.
• The same rounds are known as awel, kalei, and baraka in Tigrinya.
• Pouring from height cools the coffee enough for handleless china, and never lifting the pot keeps the settled grounds undisturbed.
• Salt blocks bitterness receptors on the tongue, and butter coats the palate with a velvety texture.
• Snacks are often popcorn or roasted peanuts, or himbasha, a mildly sweet bread spiced with cardamom.

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The official story of the Greek frappé begins in September 1957 at the Thessaloniki International Fair, where a Nestlé booth was demonstrating an instant chocolate drink shaken in cocktail shakers. With no hot water on his break, employee Dimitris Vakondios supposedly shook instant coffee with cold water and ice and invented the drink on the spot. Journalist Nikos Bakounakis raised doubts in 2006, and in 2013 the food magazine Gastronomos found Nestlé newspaper ads already promoting a Nescafé Frappé before the fair, plus a 1951 comedy starring Mimis Fotopoulos and Dinos Iliopoulos in which the actors shake the drink at an Athens patisserie and joke about being turned into a frappé.

The towering foam depends on chemistry: spray dried instant coffee loses its oils in the hot air column, so shaking it creates a stable three phase foam of air, water, and coffee solids that freeze dried coffee or espresso cannot match. That foam is intensely bitter, which is why Greeks drink from below through a straw. The frappé became an endurance drink for long café afternoons of talk and backgammon, spread abroad after the 2004 Athens Olympics, and paved the way for the freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino invented in Athens in 1991.

• The ad copy before the 1957 fair suggested drinking Nescafé over ice cubes or as an iced shake.
• Ordering vocabulary sets the sugar: sweet means four spoons, medium means two, and plain means none, with milk only on request.
• Christos Lentzos ran a coffee house in Athens from 1964 to 2013 and became famous for a blender made frappé.
• Sailors and campers without a shaker beat the coffee against the glass with a spoon, a version named for the spoon or the ship.
• In the 1980s Nestlé campaigns fused its brand so tightly with the drink that people ordered a Nescafé frappé.

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The Fairtrade sticker promises a direct line from your extra dollar to a farmer, but the economics tell a messier story. The label grew out of the collapse of the 1962 International Coffee Agreement, the UN negotiated quota system that held prices up for decades until talks stalled in 1989 and unrestricted coffee flooded the market. In 1988 the Netherlands launched Max Havelaar, named for a fictional Dutch critic of colonial exploitation, and in 1997 four national networks merged into Fairtrade International, known as FLO, which today guarantees a floor of $1.40 per pound for arabica and $1.05 for robusta.

The trouble is demand. Only a fraction of certified coffee finds a buyer willing to pay the premium, as low as 13.6% in 2001 and roughly 37% to 50% more recently, while cooperatives pay certification and inspection fees on their whole crop. The label also runs on the small scale producer standard, which assumes family labor and leaves out the seasonal pickers who do most of the harvest. Critics in the specialty trade argue a guaranteed floor dulls the reward for quality, and roasters like Intelligentsia and Counter Culture have turned to direct trade, swapping third party audits for brand trust.

• When the world price rises above the floor, importers must pay 20 cents per pound over market, plus a 30 cent premium for organic beans.
• Fairtrade coffee is exported through nested primary, secondary, and tertiary cooperatives, and surplus money usually funds social projects like classrooms or baseball fields rather than cash to farmers.
• One cooperative could cover only 70% of its extra marketing and administrative costs even after six years in the scheme.
• In a survey of certified cooperatives in Ethiopia, seasonal harvest workers made up 78% of the workforce hired by smallholder households.
• Research by Deborah Sick in Costa Rica found farmers selling their best beans to specialty buyers and routing lower grade lots through the Fairtrade cooperative.

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Bill Rosenberg noticed that factory and construction workers buying from his catering trucks mostly wanted coffee and donuts, so in 1948 he opened Open Kettle in Quincy, Massachusetts, and renamed it Dunkin' Donuts in 1950. A logo followed in 1953, the mascot Dunkie in 1954, and franchising in 1955. Johnny Spartos pushed for a donut with a handle so workers could dunk without greasy fingers, but it had to be hand cut and was discontinued in 2003 outside a Singapore holdout. In 1963 Bob Rosenberg took over at 25, cut the parent company's other businesses, standardized the menu, and later swapped ceramic mugs for paper cups and self-service.

Fred the Baker, played by Michael Vale for 16 years from 1981, sold the brand as unpretentious, and 2006 ads mocked coffee chain jargon as Fritalian. As donut sales slowed and beverage margins rose, the chain became simply Dunkin' in 2018 and 2019, and Inspire Brands bought it for $11.3 billion in October 2020. International growth has been uneven: over 14,200 locations in 39 countries, alongside exits and controversies abroad.

• Styrofoam cups were phased out globally by 2020, requiring redesigned lids and new supplier contracts.
• In early 2025 Dunkin' dropped upcharges for oat and almond milk.
• Ben Affleck's DunKings Super Bowl ads in 2023 and 2024 put his own drink order on the menu.
• Tim Hortons pushed Dunkin' out of Canada by 2018, and a May 2026 deal with Foodtastic aims for a comeback.
• A 1996 Tel Aviv launch sold three million donuts in eight months before debt and the Second Intifada closed it by 2001.