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Why coffee? For starters, it’s the second-largest traded commodity in the world, after oil. Despite heavy marketing efforts, hardly anyone picks a gas station for the brand. But they’ll administer a pistol-whipping over coffee.

Pierre Bourdieu, whose 1979 book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste is rather impenetrable, had a theory I like:

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Pour-over coffee—waiting ten minutes for coffee to trickle through a specially-made Japanese funnel—comes to mind. Taste, including the mouth stuff, is completely inseparable from culture. We own no part of our aesthetics. Instead we use preferences to create and understand the social structures we are part of. Hard workers “Run on Dunkin’.” Most Bay Area snob-shops offer a personal coffee experience, each cup made just for you.

But as soon as the middle class latches onto the favorites of the rich and famous, the wealthy move on.

Starbucks worked for awhile, with its grande/venti code and delightfully artsy interior. But lattes haven’t been enough for years; even McDonald’s serves them now. Where to go but snobbier precincts?

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– http://www.theawl.com/2013/10/what-does-your-coffee-say-about-you-and-is-it-something-terrible