$16 Cup Of Blue Bottle Coffee Not A Hit With Everyone
Blue Bottle is serving up the Yemen Port of Mokha coffee.
The story of how coffee exporter Mokhtar Alkanshali got the beans to the Bay Area from Yemen is unique.
"The only way out of the country was I actually had to take a small fishing boat and cross the Red Sea from that Port of Mokha to Africa," Alkanshali told KCBS.
Some coffee experts are loving the brew. "We made it here, and in a blind taste test with some of the world's best coffees over at Blue Bottle, the coffee out-beat them all, Alkanshali said.
"It's a tasty coffee. It's pretty balanced," Ben Alexander, who runs a coffee bar in Amsterdam said.
But, it hasn't been a hit with everyone.
"Terrible. I don't know what that one is, but it doesn't even taste like coffee," one taster said.
"It tastes like old grapes, like raisins," another taster said.
But, that $16 goes to a good cause.
"My goal was to go and help these farmers there improve the quality of their coffees by bringing in new technologies, and paying them a good price point," Alkanshali said.