Alt Wien Kaffee, Vienna, Austria

For a city famed for its coffee houses, they apparently serve pretty poor coffee. Like any capital though, there are plenty of third/fifth wave cafés to seek out the better stuff, but getting the premium stuff takes a little more searching.
I turn to Lonely Planet’s Global Coffee Tour, a flight from a friend that has served me well on my travels down the years and I hope the ones detailed here have survived the hit of COVID. With two of the best in the world listed in Vienna, I only have time to get to one and Alt Kafee Wien is the one that, geographically, suits my needs.
Calling it a café undersells this glorious emporium of equipment and brews, a chapel of caffeine, a shrine to the beany beverage, the shelves are stacked to the ceiling with high end ephemera and bags of the finest blends and single origins.
I manage to order a few oat lattes in my school boy German but asking for a recommendation for beans to take home is beyond me and so I take the plunge and just risk picking up a bag and hoping for the best. The gent serving assesses my choice and, in flawless English, says,
“You know this is decaffeinated , right?”
“Oh, god no!” 
He chuckles heartily at this as I put it back on the shelf.
“I think, perhaps, you are a bit young for this.”
“Yeah, perhaps in 30 years, maybe.”
For some reason this really tickles him and he cracks up as I try to ask what’s good for a home espresso machine. In between guffaws he hands me the Rossini blend and I dutifully pay as he lines up the lattes for me and my mates. We can still hear him chortling and saying “decaf”, as he shakes his head, when we leave.
The latte is a single origin from Cuba that has a smooth, rich bitterness that is cut nicely with the sweetness of the oat milk. It seems sweeter and to me out here than back home but I don’t know if that’s the case or if I’m just overthinking it. I’m genuinely chuffed we made it here, and that my mates made the time for me to make this little discovery. Does it deserve its name as one of the best in the world? I don’t know but it’s certainly one of the best I’ve been to.