Dafé Date Coffee

As such a big proponent of coffee, it seems odd to be writing about alternatives but if I didn’t even try what’s out there, I’d feel like I’m not properly committing to advocating coffee as the supreme hot beverage choice.
Still, I’m sceptical when I come across date seed ‘coffee’. I’m a massive fan of the stone fruit, and as a vegan, come across it regularly in baked goods and other recipes (it works really well in Chilli, surprisingly) but to grind up the bit that I usually throw away and drink it as my morning wake up call? I’m not entirely convinced.
I stumble across the product at a vegan food festival, the sort of place where odd cuisine choices are more likely to thrive due to the persistent search for meat and dairy alternatives and the fact that most who have committed to a vegan lifestyle are already fairly open to changing their diets. However, a caffeine free fruit drink that can be made in a Moka Pot or Espresso Machine does not a coffee make! I am intrigued though, and never one to turn down a free sample, I plunge straight in once the opportunity arises to try out this pretender to the throne. Can it possibly compete?
The first thing to strike me is the texture. The mouth feel is more akin to tea than coffee, although thicker and smoother, coating the tongue but lacking a certain density that coffee provides. Then there’s the sweetness. Sure, you can have sweet coffee but not sugary sweet. Granted, date coffee doesn’t feel sickly or syrupy, like one might expect, but it certainly has a sweetness that doesn’t naturally come from coffee, a bit like a cup of tea with 2 or 3 heaped teaspoons of sugar in. 
Its warming presence has a calming effect, which is not what I want from my coffee. Granted, I could sometimes do with the heart pounding wrench of too much caffeine but to have no change at all, to lose the wakeup call I clutch for first thing in the morning, then this can’t possibly be a viable alternative. I could see myself drinking this as a before bedtime drink, something to soothe me into slumber and to quell the pains of knowing you’ve eaten your last meal of the day. The  price point is not as dramatically high as coffee at £6.50 for 250g, but I sort of expect to pay more for blends shipped from halfway across the globe, as well as being prepared to pay more for ethically sourced coffee that pays the workers a fair wage. I don’t know enough about date production to know what’s going on here but £6.50 for something that isn’t coffee just feels steep.
All in all, I have no great issue with date coffee I just don’t think it should go by the name of ‘coffee’ but perhaps I’m too deeply embedded into coffee culture at this point to truly appreciate it.