The World's Most Expensive Cup of Coffee

How much do you pay for a decent cup of coffee locally?

Well it depends what sort of coffee you like and where you buy it of course, but whatever and wherever, you can be sure that few other basic products have such a massive variation in price.

Incredibly you can pay from as little as 20p for a 7oz paper cup of instant coffee from a vending machine, up to around andpound;4 for a large cappuccino from a speciality shop.

But where would you expect to find the most expensive cup of coffee on the planet?

Not surprisingly you need look no further than a country with a high cost of living and, according to a recent survey by the London office of U.S. consulting firm Mercers, if you go to Moscow you will find the average price is over andpound;6.00 a cup.

Japan, however, is the place for astronomical prices, and since their rise to economic superpower status, a culture for high flyers to pay silly prices for unique products has developed.

One man who has shrewdly exploited his compatriots' addiction to expensive luxuries is Keishiro Funakoshi. Mr Funakoshi is the proprietor of the Akaneya Coffee Shop in scenic Karuizawa, a popular mountain resort 100 miles northwest of Tokyo.

For around andpound;22, he offers a cup of coffee that is perhaps one of the most expensive in the world - served as something of a ritual at a special table by a kimono-clad waitress. Funakoshi thinks that it is not so much the quality of his coffee (a home-blended brew of charcoal-roasted grains freshly ground for each customer) or the decor of his establishment (a narrow, dark wooden hut decorated in rustic Mingei style), but rather the uniquely exorbitant prices that attract wealthy tourists to his coffee shop.

"People come to Karuizawa with the expectation of spending money," he says, "so why shouldn't I help them in this endeavour?"

But the 'honour' of selling the most expensive cup of coffee in the world belongs much nearer to home - London in fact. Last year at Peter Jones department store in the West End you had to pay andpound;50 for a cup of coffee!

Internationally-renowned barista David Cooper created the coffee, which is a blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the exclusive Kopi Luwak bean. Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee, is made from beans eaten, partly digested, and then expelled by the Indonesian civet cat.

These feline creatures, who inhabit the areas around coffee plantations, prefer to eat only the ripest and most tasty coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system break down the flesh of the fruit and after the animals have expelled the beans, they are collected from the plantation floor by workers who then wash away the dung and roast them.

It should be noted however, that all proceeds from the coffee sales at Peter Jones were donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.