Drinks
Decaf Is the Hottest Thing in Coffee Right Now
No longer a punch line, caffeine-free is quietly cleaning up.
Blue Bottle’s Decaf New Orleans-style coffee and chicory.
Source: Blue Bottle Coffee
On a trip to Colombia last year, Weihong Zhang was given a “mysterious bag of coffee” by his friend Francesco Sanapo, a three-time Italian Barista Champion. This was not quite as suspect as it might sound: Weihong is the owner of BlendIn Coffee Club, a roastery with a pair of cafes in Houston. Mysterious bags of coffee are kind of his thing.
With its notes of eucalyptus and strawberry, Weihong assumed the bag contained expensive beans like anaerobically fermented Geishas or Sidras. But Sanapo revealed something much more rare for a coffee of this quality: It was caffeine-free.