13 Best Gourmet Coffee Gifts: The Ultimate List

This is the gift that will score you at least three months’ worth of points with the recipient. It’s a three-month subscription to Driftaway Coffee’s whole bean program.

Here’s how the three-month subscription works. (If it’s for you, you’re the person we’re referring to as “you.” If it’s for someone else, they’re the person we’re referring to as “you.”)

Month 1 – Driftaway sends four two-ounce bags of whole beans. You grind, you make, you taste. Let Driftaway know which bag you preferred.
Month 2 – Driftaway sends seven ounces of the beans of your choice.
Month 3 – Driftaway sends seven ounces of the beans of your choice.

After that, the subscription can easily be extended or cancelled.

When the first month’s sampler kit is sent, it includes four types of single-origin coffee beans:

• Fruity – light roasted, typically from Africa
• Classic – medium roasted, typically from South America
• Balanced – light roasted, typically from Central America
• Bold – dark roasted, from around the world

Driftaway roasts the beans at their Brooklyn location. Also note the great packaging (labels look like old school airline bag tags) that adds to the cool factor of this gourmet coffee gift.

If you like trying new coffees from around the world that you’ve never tried before, chances are that you’ll love what The Chosen Bean has to offer. The coffee company specializes in curated coffee boxes that each include 6 unique specialty coffees, and almost all of them I’ve loved so far.

My personal favorite is the Sumatra: Dark roast that comes in the Making of the Bean Gift Box (an educational themed coffee gift box). It’s a heavenly morning cup of joe that will wake up your senses every morning with notes of dark chocolate and cedar. My second favorite brew is the Ethiopia bean, which has an almost fruity yet still dark and sultry flavor. I’m also a sucker for Mexican coffee, and The Chosen Bean’s Mexico roast is no exception.

Where the Chosen Bean gets its name from is really what makes it interesting: it hand chooses only the top 3% of coffee beans from hundreds of samples from farms around the world.

There are a few different gourmet box sets available from The Chosen Bean, so you’ll definitely find something that will fit your own personal tastes. 

As far as the actual brewing is concerned, I highly recommend using a french press for the best results.

This gift comes with two layers of vetting: we’ve selected it for the list and, secondly, it’s from a small company in Seattle. (Read: the coffee capital of the world.)

These are whole beans but it’s not just one thing of beans. The World Coffee Tour is a box of 15 different bags of coffee beans sourced from around the world. The beans are then roasted by master-roasters in Seattle.

Bean Box describes the array this way: “The ultimate tour of the world’s top coffee-producing regions, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Panama, Brazil, and Kona.”

If you dig the coffee gift sets, Bean Box has a coffee & biscotti box, also featuring Seattle roasters.

These whole beans are from a family-owned company in Florida that sources most of its beans from Latin America. Don Pablo is the nickname that company founder Darron Burke’s grandmother-in-law gave him.

About the coffee: this is Cafe Don Pablo’s signature blend of 100 percent Arabica beans sourced from Colombia, Guatemala and Brazil. Cafe Don Pablo roasts their own beans in small batches just prior to shipping. In this case, it’s a big five pound bag.

The cupping notes describe the flavor as “sweetly intense, balanced aroma with milk chocolate, cedar and ripe tomato notes.”

This delicious gourmet coffee is super popular – give it a try!

This is a very cool rendition of gourmet coffee and it hits the bull’s eye on two delicious targets: coffee and booze. These are whole beans that have been aged — before roasting — in used whiskey or rum barrels.

After several months in the barrels, the Cooper’s Cask master roaster roasts the single-origin beans and then personally initials and writes the roast date and lot number on every bag.

This coffee gift set comes with:

• Kentucky Bourbon/Colombian
• American Single Malt Whiskey/Sumatra
• Rye Whiskey/Ethiopian
• Rum/Rwanda

Each bag has four ounces of beans inside and the whole thing is packaged in a good-looking Cooper’s Cask Box Set.

Proving that coffee roasters have the same clever DNA in them that craft beer makers or winemakers do, Death Wish Coffee Co. has attached a clever name to itself. They call themselves…um…Death Wish Coffee Co.

This is the company’s signature blend — a bag of Death Wish beans — coupled with a bag of another popular blend of beans they make — Valhalla Java. They are whole beans, with the Death Wish in a 16-ounce bag and the Valhalla is a 12-ounce bag.

These are Fair Trade and USDA Certified Organic, which is great, but the company really prides itself on what it says on the back of the Death Wish bag: “Warning: world’s strongest coffee. Our beans are carefully selected and roasted to provide the most highly caffeinated, bold coffee available.”

This is the big-ticket item on the list, but there’s a very good reason for that. It’s summed up in three words: Jamaica Blue Mountain.

The Blue Mountains are the largest mountain range in Jamaica and that’s where they grow coffee. The coffee farmers don’t produce much, but what they do make is extremely popular among coffee aficionados. Some 80 to 90 percent of all the Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee grown is exported to Japan, where they have a literal thirst for the stuff.

So because of its scarcity and its taste, Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is one of the — if not the — most expensive coffees in the world. And in this case — the 16-ounce bag of whole beans from Volcanica — it’s peaberry whole beans. Peaberry coffee beans are very small and they represent the best five percent of a harvest (of any type of coffee found anywhere).

The Jamaica coffee industry is tightly regulated by the Jamaica Agricultural Commodities Regulatory Authority Coffee Division (formerly the Jamaica Coffee Industry Board) and growers and distributors of the beans must be licensed and certified.

In this case, Volcanica does get its Jamaica Blue Mountain beans from an authorized producer — the Wallenford Estate. You can find other products on Amazon that are marketed as Jamaica Blue Mountain beans (some from Wallenford, some from Jah B), but there are others that don’t emphasize their official source.

Frankly, one giveaway as to the authenticity of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee is price. If you find it priced low, you’re probably getting a non-licensed version or a blend.

Volcanica calls this “the Rolls Royce of coffees and the most prized coffee in the world.” The single-source beans are medium roasted and immediately packaged and sealed.

For an extravagant gourmet coffee gift, consider Volcanica’s two-pack of Jamaica Blue Mountain beans, which also come with biscotti and a rum cake, packed in a gift box.

This is a great idea, especially for a New Yorker, but any coffee lover will dig this.

Chock Full o’Nuts was born in New York in the 1920s and, as you may guess, they sold nuts. In the 1930s, they added coffee to their product lineup. CFON coffee became an institution for New Yorkers.

Once the company expanded from its home base and went national, they got a lotta questions about their coffee: does it have nuts in it? The answer is no. (See the label.)

This is a 26 ounce can of their gourmet ground roast. The company calls it an “all purpose grind…light, smooth and aromatic.”

If you are — or someone you know is — a New Yorker and you really want the authentic Chock Full ‘oNuts experience, the Original CFON might be your thing. It’s in a 26 ounce can and they call it their “signature Chock Full o’Nuts coffee.”

Historically, coffee from Costa Rica has always been considered one of the best coffees you can get. In terms of size, Costa Rica is the 129th largest country in the world. In terms of coffee size, Costa Rica is the 13th largest coffee producer in the world.

This is a 2.2 pound bag of 100 percent Arabica beans roasted by the long time company Cafe Tres Generaciones. They’re peaberry beans, which are the smaller, more robust beans that many coffee purists insist are the best. (Peaberry beans are, typically, just the best five percent of each harvest.)

The coffee is grown on the Doka Estate at 4,500 feet elevation in Costa Rica’s central valley, near the Poas Volcano. Volcanic soil is thought to be the best foundation for growing the tastiest beans.

Without boring you too much, let me say: I’m not an energy drink guy. I am a coffee guy. I like — really like — these FORTO Coffee Shots because they taste great. They are, though, billed as an “energy boost.” And believe me: they definitely provide a kick.

FORTO sent me some of their Coffee Shots to sample, and they are delicious. I took a sip of the first one. Then another sip. And then — being a fast eater/big consumer kind of guy — I just said screw it and I downed the whole thing. This was after I’d already had my regular morning coffee. The energy aspect of these things really works, trust me.

All that said, let’s focus on the gourmet coffee aspect of these shots:

• They’re made with organic Arabica fair trade Colombian coffee beans
• The coffee is cold brewed
• They’re made with Hershey’s chocolate
• They’re made with organic milk

For me, the energy aspect doesn’t interest me. The taste aspect does. What also interests me is the vibe of the company. Take a quick look at their website and you really get the feeling that this is a good citizen type of company with employees who love what they do. I can always get behind that.

We’re focusing on the 6-Pack of Hershey’s Chocolate Lattes here, but FORTO has a lot of different products available. Some have 100mg of caffeine (the equivalent to one cup of coffee, according to FORTO) and some have 200mg of caffeine. You can get 6-Packs (or 12-Packs) in one flavor or in a variety pack.

This whole bean roast is a blend of Columbian, Guatemalan, and Sumatran (my personal favorite) dark roasts. The company uses specialty-grade whole beans that provide a hint of spicy cinnamon with a bright finish.

Bold. Full. Dark – these are all how I would describe Koffee Kult’s Dark Roast.