“Twelve gates, and at every one somebody decides.” A journalist follows the cup that stands on his kitchen counter every morning: into a forest in Kaffa, onto a slope beneath shade trees, into a fermentation tank, onto a drying bed, into a container, a roastery — and back again to his kitchen. What he learns on the way is not how to make coffee. It is how little of it depends on him. Botany, growing, harvest, processing — from the forest to the sack. Price, seals, trade: where the nine euros of a bag actually go. Roasting, grinding, water, extraction — with numbers that hold. Nine parts, 42 chapters, explanatory plates, over seventy drawings. Every factual statement checked individually against sources. Where sources contradict one another, the contradiction stands in the text.
