It’s been about a year since I visited the first ever Starbucks shop. Opened in 1971, it’s a small, almost nondescript place in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Hounded by the usual two or three Japanese tourists with SLR cameras, one could easily spot the trivial coffee attraction down the busy public market. The shop maintains the original logo with a bare-breasted siren, her two tails flung up. There is no seating area, you just order and go.

Ever curious, people have brewed and smoked almost everything that protrudes in one form or another from the earth and then some. Coffee is, without a doubt, the most popular of these experiments.

The perfect brew follows the perfect roast. It’s a delightful play on our senses that begins with smell before sight. The smell primes us for an encounter with a dark, rich liquid. A liquid that promises to wake up our other senses as well as our body and mind. And that, it surely does.

The first sip quickly crescendos into the blend’s unique character. A rapid cascade follows. Traces of continents and countries and herdsmen amongst plantations meet, greet and dissipate. From Yemen to Brazil, and from Ethiopia to Sumatra, your everyday blend coffee is truly a multicultural experience in its own right. If you will pardon deficient nation labelling, coffee is developing countries in a cup.

Now before you shake your head in dismay, hear me out. Canned coffee works. Choosing between Red Bull and canned coffee, I’ll opt for the latter.