Coffee capitalism or coffee love, enjoying a long black in London seems to be in vogue. No wonder, the city ranks as the world’s top coffee capital for Instagram lovers, receiving a 100/100 Coffee Culture Score. A new study by Heepsy, an influencer marketing platform, analysed coffee affordability, café density, and Instagram engagement across up to 70 global cities to identify which destinations offer the best coffee experience.

Instagram meets coffee culture Illustration: The Telegraph

London takes the top spot. Here, coffee lovers have 3,544 cafés to choose from while coffee prices average $3.40. London appears to have generated 584,600 Instagram posts, showing strong social media engagement around its coffee scene.

Second on the list is Melbourne, leading globally in Instagram engagement, with over 1.1 million coffee-related posts. The city offers moderately priced coffee at an average of $2.90. Although cappuccinos and frappuccinos cost nearly twice as much as in most other cities, in the top 10.

Sao Paulo is at number three with coffee priced at just $1.40. It is among the most affordable in the top rankings. Brazil’s largest city has 1,288 cafés, the third-highest count among all ranked cities, earning a total of 97.1 Coffee Culture Score.

Rome is fourth. The city has plenty of cafés, where all coffee types are moderately priced at $1.40 median. Rome also offers the lowest-priced espresso among the ranked cities.

Rounding off the top five is Istanbul, featuring around 1,100 cafés just like Rome. The Turkish city offers coffee types for $1.50 on average.

So, what should you be drinking this week? There are plenty of options, but it appears that London is partial to the long black at the moment. It’s a shorter black coffee, around the same size as a flat white.

For finding the difference between a long black and an Americano, we fall back on an Instagram Reel from a coffee shop Tamp, in Chiswick, west London. We have already mentioned the size, but some baristas say that adding the espresso second, on top of the hot water, is important. That way, the hot water is closer in temperature to the espresso that’s coming out of the machine.

“This way the crema from the espresso sits nicely on top of the water,” shows the Reel.