Though I have been a tea person all my life, coffee has always intrigued me. During my travels in the United States, it seemed to be everywhere: at breakfast tables, in offices, beside hotel reception desks and in paper cups carried through the streets. In Ethiopia, I encountered something more intimate—a tradition in which roasting, brewing and serving coffee became an expression of hospitality. My friend in Addis Ababa spoke of Ethiopian coffee with unmistakable pride. The cup held something of his country.

Both my sons are coffee drinkers. I have tried to understand why they prefer it to tea, and have come to suspect that preference belongs partly to one’s svabhava—one’s individual disposition, shaped by temperament, habit and experience. Yet chemistry offers a clue. Tea and coffee contain the same principal stimulant: caffeine, chemically called 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, with the formula C₈H₁₀N₄O₂. The caffeine molecule is the same; what changes is the chemical company it keeps. Perhaps this is a modest lesson in individuality: even the same ingredient can participate in very different experiences.

Their differences begin in the plant. Tea comes from the leaves and buds of Camellia sinensis, usually grown as a bush under cultivation. Different processing methods produce green, black, and other teas. Coffee ‘beans’, despite their name, are seeds inside the fruit of a Coffea plant—the coffee cherry. Tea brings the leaf to our cup; coffee brings the seed.

For brewed tea and coffee, water acts as the intermediary between plant and person, extracting soluble compounds that give the drink its taste, colour and effect. What we call a familiar flavour results from many molecules coming together.

The two principal coffee species grown commercially are Arabica and Robusta. Both are evergreen shrubs or small trees, with glossy dark-green leaves and clusters of white flowers followed by red coffee cherries. And yet they are distinct species with different genetic architectures. Arabica generally has delicate, floral or fruity aromas; Robusta has more caffeine on average and a fuller, more bitter taste. Even within one species, flavour varies with variety, climate, soil, cultivation, processing and roasting. Each cup carries traces of its birthplace and the hands that shaped it.

Roasting turns the coffee bean into coffee as we know it. A dried, unroasted seed does not smell like the coffee we recognise. Heat triggers a complex chain of chemical reactions. Among them is the Maillard reaction, in which sugars in the seed react with amino compounds while heated to produce brown pigments and numerous aroma molecules.

India’s Monsooned Malabar coffee is a particularly evocative example. Under controlled conditions, dried green beans are exposed to moisture-laden monsoon air, causing them to swell and change in colour and flavour. The monsoon, which shapes so much of Indian life, also shapes this drink.

At home, most of us distinguish between filter coffee and instant coffee. We brew filter coffee from ground roasted beans. Instant coffee has already been extracted at a factory and dried into a soluble form; we add hot water to dissolve it again to make our cup.

Freshly brewed filter coffee generally offers more of the aroma and complexity enthusiasts prize. Its volatile aroma molecules are released just during and immediately after brewing. Instant coffee must pass through extraction, concentration, drying and storage. In spray-drying, the extract is dispersed into hot air, which rapidly removes its water. In freeze-drying, the extract is frozen and dried under vacuum, allowing ice to pass directly from a solid state into vapour.

One ingredient deserves particular attention in India: chicory. This is a separate plant, Cichorium intybus, whose roasted root is blended with coffee. It contributes an earthy, roasted, slightly caramel-like flavour and a fuller mouthfeel, especially with milk. It also generally costs less than coffee, making the blend more affordable.

Chicory itself is naturally caffeine-free. Familiar Indian filter-coffee blends contain around 15–20 per cent chicory, while some mainstream instant blends contain 30 per cent. When I visited Addis Ababa, my friend told me that Ethiopia had no established tradition comparable to India’s coffee–chicory blending. His pride in the coffee itself stayed with me. 

So, how might a lifelong tea drinker make a satisfying cup of coffee at home, without chicory?

A simple start is pure instant coffee with equal parts hot water and milk. The ingredient declaration should say ‘100% coffee’. Look for a pure instant-coffee product, rather than a coffee–chicory blend. For a modest 150 ml cup, use about 1.5–2 grams of instant coffee—approximately one level teaspoon. Dissolve it in 75 ml of hot water, then add 75 ml of hot milk. Taste the coffee before adding sugar. As someone who enjoys tea without sugar, I would first allow the coffee to introduce itself.

There is no universally optimal milk ratio. For a more pronounced coffee flavour, try 100 ml water and 50 ml milk. For a creamier cup, reverse those quantities. Keeping the coffee amount unchanged makes it easier to see what the milk adds.

With pure ground filter coffee, brew with water first. For a concentrated South Indian-style decoction, one part filtered decoction to two parts hot milk is a useful starting point. The right balance depends on the decoction’s strength and one’s taste. A good cup emerges through a little attention and adjustment.

But the cup has another story, extending far beyond our kitchen.

Coffee connects an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy and, finally, to a service economy. The grower tends the trees and harvests the cherries, paying for labour and inputs while facing pests, disease and uncertain weather. A local collector or cooperative assembles small quantities into commercial lots. The primary processor removes the fruit and protective coverings, then dries, mills and grades the beans.

Exporters, importers, and traders find buyers, finance inventories, and arrange deliveries, managing freight, storage, interest costs, exchange rates, and price fluctuations. Roasters and instant-coffee manufacturers turn green beans into consumer products. Retailers and cafés bring them to us, adding the costs of premises, staff, equipment, preparation and service. Each stage adds work and costs, but bargaining power determines how much of the reward each can claim.

Consider an illustrative café calculation. If roasted coffee costs ₹1,000 per kilogram and a drink uses 20 grams, the coffee ingredient costs ₹20. Suppose the drink sells for ₹200. The remaining ₹180 must cover milk (where used), staff, rent, equipment, utilities, wastage, taxes and profit. The ₹20 is the café’s purchase cost for roasted coffee, not the farmer’s receipt, and the ₹180 is not automatically the café’s profit.

A farmer’s share of a café cup’s price is therefore an incomplete measure of fairness. More revealing questions concern the life behind the harvest. Does farming cover its full costs? Does it provide the household with a decent living? Can the grower invest in the next crop? Who owns the café, and are its workers paid fairly? How much of the value sustains livelihoods, and how much becomes another means for ‘Big Money’ to multiply itself? The same questions apply to tea.

Coffee has the larger international commercial economy by traded value. To give a sense of scale, FAO estimated global tea production at about 7.3 million tonnes in 2025, while USDA estimated coffee in the 2025/26 marketing year at about 10.7 million tonnes of green beans. These are different reporting periods and products, so the comparison is indicative rather than exact.

The tea export business is about US$7.0 billion, compared with US$44.1 billion for coffee—roughly six times as much. India exported approximately US$804 million worth of tea and US$1,112 million worth of coffee that year.

Despite being a major producer and exporter, India imports both tea and coffee. Tea, mostly low-cost bulk black tea, comes from Kenya, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Darjeeling tea is globally cherished, but it can be grown only in a small, approximately 70-square-mile Himalayan region in West Bengal. Green coffee beans come from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brazil. India processes much of this coffee and re-exports it.

Behind the fragrance of a cup made at home lie sacks, warehouses, grading tables, ports and ships. Farmers watch the weather; workers tend processing machines; traders study prices; someone ensures that a container remains dry through a long voyage. We rarely see this dispersed company of people, yet their work reaches our table.

The playful question, “Tea, coffee, or me?” may therefore admit a generous answer. We need the drink, but we also need the person offering it. Flavour draws us to the cup; companionship gives the occasion its meaning.

Whether you are sipping tea or coffee, you are connected to humanity and to the Earth that sustains us. In the five or ten minutes that your cup remains warm, let that connection bring comfort and a sense of wholeness. Your difficulties deserve attention, but they need not occupy the whole horizon. A world is still growing leaves and ripening cherries; someone is still willing to sit beside you; and there is still a little warmth to receive.