Two men are drinking coffee behind the counter at Mercury Espresso Bar on Queen East. No, strike that. Two baristas are noisily slurping espresso and spitting it out. One shakes his Duran Duran haircut enthu­siastically. “Nice!” he says, his upper lip quivering with excitement. The older, bearded barista announces the flavours of the new beans: “Blackcurrant, berries, very bright tasting.” The younger guy looks up at him admiringly: “You called it, man—it’s got a great finish.”

I could barely keep a straight face. I’m all for drinking coffee from better quality beans, but must we be so self-conscious about it? The exchange made me nostalgic for the old bars of Little Italy, where a half-decent espresso was simply a given. A coffee break was just that: a break from the day and a chance to catch up with your neighbours.

Not anymore. Coffee, like chocolate before it, has become the new wine, complete with tasting notes and single-estate pedigrees. Independent cafés—Bulldog, Mercury, Dark Horse, The Common, Manic Coffee—are popping up all over the city, sometimes within blocks of each other. (Mercury plans to open two more locations this year.) Baristas are becoming mini- celebrities, with blogs, cult followings and serious credentials. Latte art—intricate designs of rosettes and hearts folded into the steamed milk—has become their calling card. Some even travel halfway across the world to compete. Their work constitutes performance art (hence, perhaps, all those tattooed arms). Like it or not, Toronto’s café culture is changing.

Leading the revolution is Manic Coffee at College and Lippincott, where good coffee has fallen into the hands of gadget-obsessed geeks. Owner Matthew Lee, a soft-spoken ex-banker, has a hand-built espresso machine that can control water temperature within half a degree, a fancy water filtration system (Toronto water is apparently too hard; the minerals distort the coffee flavour) and a digital scale to weigh his beans. Within weeks of opening last fall, people were lining up for $15-a-cup coffee, which Lee was selling at a loss. Esmeralda Especial, a rare single-estate Panamanian made from the geisha bean, is the same bean, he explains earnestly, that “started me on my coffee journey,” back when he was a barista at Vancouver’s storied Elysian Room.

Lee is a man who takes his coffee ser­iously—the sort of person who announces “I follow the West Coast doctrine” without an ounce of irony. He refuses to offer wi-fi to his customers; he wants Manic to be an oasis, rather than a temporary office for earbudded laptop users. And hey, if you’re spending $15 on a cup of coffee, it’s probably best not to have any distractions. Or milk. Or sugar. “Having people enjoy their coffee black is the first step,” says Lee, who briefly considered confiscating a cup of Esmeralda when a customer doctored it up with the works, killing any chance of tasting the delicate orange blossom and jasmine notes for which the bean is famous.

I couldn’t agree with him more. Years ago, when I asked Ernesto Illy, of the famed espresso company, what he thought of Starbucks, he said, “Starbucks is fine—if you like milk.” And I’m glad we’re rediscovering the pleasures of the kaffeeklatsch, lingering in shops rather than schlepping our coffee around the city in the adult equivalent of a sippy cup. But can anyone really justify a $15 coffee?

To start me on my journey, Lee leaps up to brew two coffees on Manic’s infamous Clover, an $11,500 machine that bloggers alternately mock vehemently (“It pours water over a bean, people”) and solemnly defend (“I had the best cup of black coffee in my life”). Tres Santos, from Colombia, and Kenyan Kangocho are roasted and delivered twice a week by Intelligentsia, the Chicago-based company that sources its beans through direct trade.

Lee begins the infusion ritual by measuring 28 grams of whole beans into a porcelain bowl on the digital scale. After the beans are ground (he adjusts his grinder for every order), he tips them into the top of the Clover, and a tap pours hot water over them. He stirs it with a whisk. Forty seconds later, the grounds are pushed upward, and a reverse vacuum sucks the water down through the filter. I venture that it’s basically a fancy upside-down French press. Lee demurs: “The most important thing is to do the French press properly—so much depends on the oper­ator.” OK, a French press with less room for human error.

I have never tasted a cleaner coffee—there isn’t a hint of bitterness to the Colombian. To my palate, it’s almost too clean. The Ken­yan is more interesting. As the Mercury baristas might say, the coffee tastes like black­currants and wine as it cools. “The mark of a good coffee is that you can drink it hot or cold,” Lee explains. The evolving flavours are fascinating to a food nerd like me, but it’s not what I’d choose to drink every morning. And there is a limit to my interest in how many PPM of minerals are in our city’s water, versus the number recommended by some international coffee association.