Specialty coffee in Vienna.

Vienna has had a coffee culture for three hundred years, and it is on the country's heritage list: marble tables, a Melange on a silver tray, a glass of water, a newspaper on a stick and nobody hurrying you out. Specialty coffee arrived around 2010 and did not try to replace any of that. It set up next door.

The two cultures run in parallel. You go to Sperl or Demel for an afternoon and a strudel; you go to Jonas Reindl or Kaffeefabrik for a light-roast filter, a bag of beans and a conversation about a farm in Nicaragua. Johanna Wechselberger's coffee school trained the first baristas in 2006, CaffèCouture opened in 2010 with a menu of "coffee with milk" and "coffee without", the world barista final came to town in 2012, and the roasters followed: Kaffeefabrik, Coffee Pirates, Süssmund, Jonas Reindl.

Austria's competitors have since won world titles in roasting and brewing, and Vienna's roasters produced a run of national champions. The Vienna Coffee Festival in January is where the two cultures share a hall, and a Peruvian farmer's son runs one of the city's better-known roasteries.

Jonas Reindl is the hub: direct trade with the same Nicaraguan farm since 2014, omni-roasts and dedicated profiles, a roastery café on Westbahnstraße and the original in the ninth. Süssmund roasts gently "according to origin and process", works directly with a Mexican cooperative, and shows its coffee in a showroom on Rauhensteingasse in the first district. Kaffeefabrik buys through the Roasters United cooperative and pours in small neighbourhood cafés. Coffee Pirates roasts organic lots on an exposed machine in a room the size of a Kaffeehaus, and sells yeast-fermented experiments online.

Gota is run by Junior Vargas Otero, born on a coffee farm near Cusco, and its shelf leans on Peru, with Gesha and Sidra at the top. Kaffemik went from pouring Europe's guest roasters in Neubau to roasting its own. Fürth roasts for its Café Comet, and Kaffeestudio, VOGEL, Koun, Nomi, Baristas United and Don Joaco fill the districts between. Alt Wien bridges the two cultures, roasting dark blends for the old palate and organic single origins for the new. Out in St. Pölten, world roasting champion Felix Teiretzbacher's Kaffeelix supplies cafés across the region.

Johanna Wechselberger, whom the trade calls the mother of Viennese coffee, trained the first generation. Georg Branny opened CaffèCouture. Tobias Radinger founded Kaffeefabrik and plugged Vienna into the European cooperative. Philip Feyer built Jonas Reindl. Nikolaus Hartmann left architecture for Süssmund and won the national brewers title twice; Norbert Rieberer joined him from finance. Junior Vargas Otero took Gota to the national title and the world semi-finals. And Felix Teiretzbacher and Martin Wölfl brought Austria world titles in roasting and brewing.

Vienna's specialty coffee follows the districts, and each district got a different kind of café.

A Melange in the old houses, a flat white or a filter in the new ones. Vienna's specialty cafés have an unusually strong filter habit for a Central European capital: V60, AeroPress and Chemex on most menus beside the batch brewer. On the shelf, Colombia, Ethiopia and Brazil lead Vienna's listed origins, washed leads the processes with natural behind it, and Peru has a bigger presence here than almost anywhere thanks to Gota.

Light roasting is the rule among the third-wave roasters, in deliberate contrast to the dark blends of the traditional trade, and the experimental end is well stocked: anaerobic, thermal-shock and yeast-inoculated lots from Coffee Pirates and Gota, Gesha and Sidra at the top. Oat milk is on every specialty bar, which changes how the espresso blends are built. The live count stands at 11 decaf and 26 filter-friendly listings.

Vienna's ladder runs from Alt Wien's everyday blends to Peruvian Gesha in a small bag. These numbers come from every Vienna coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €52 per kilogram, about €13 for a standard bag.

The ladder reads like this: espresso blends and washed Latin Americans around €47 per kilogram, washed East Africans and the first fermented lots from about €64 per kilogram, and the most expensive listing right now at €202 per kilogram. 124 coffees carry a price today. Most roasters run subscriptions and ship across Austria and Germany.