In 1946 Frank Sinatra was singing “they’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.” Fifty plus years later coffee was still not really a ’thing’ in England. The cafetière made the occasional appearance at posh dinner parties and I remember the excitement when my mum bought a percolator, but most of the time coffee came in a jar marked ’instant’. Nobody knew what a latte, cappuccino or americano was, much less how to make one.

Explosive growth
The British are renowned for their love of tea, but wander down any high street in the UK today and you may assume that coffee has become the hot drink of choice. (Most reports suggest it hasn’t – yet – but is closing in.) This growth has been driven by large multinationals, leading to an explosion in coffee shop chains. In a market town near my parents there are three separate outlets of the same coffee chain along one street.

Over the years I have noticed a similar growth in cafés across the Saanenland, with one notable difference: no corporate coffee (aside from the Starbucks vending machine at Gstaad railway station but that hardly counts). We’ve seen restaurants position themselves as places to stop for coffee. We’ve seen bakeries become coffee shops. The hotels offer coffee of course. And until recently a local furniture shop opened a kind of pop-up café.

Being the exciting people that we are (!), my husband and I started to count the number of places where you could buy a coffee locally. Put your hand over the next line in this article then hazard a guess as to how many places there are in Gstaad and Saanen alone? 23. Yes, that many.

Regular readers of this column will know I’m not what you’d call adventurous. You won’t find me on the Tiger Run, haring down slopes on a trottibike, jumping off the Wispile in a tandem paraglider or soaring above Château-d’Oex in a hot air balloon, but I do excel at going out for coffee. And occasionally cake. So I thought I’d write a brief unofficial guide to coffee in Gstaad and Saanen.

The unofficial Gstaad and Saanen coffee shop guide
If you want the biggest selection of cakes, go to the Coop or Charly’s. For a taste of nostalgia, the Posthotel Rössli would be my pick. Chocolate lovers should head to the Palace Hotel where they often balance a small praline on your saucer instead of a biscuit. The Landhaus in Saanen (especially the terrace) is a great place for good coffee. If you want your drink to taste just the way you like it, head to the Coop where you make your own. Le Grand Chalet serves the most exquisite cake (and remembered our coffee order even though we’d only visited once before). And if you’re on a date? I’ve always found the Rialto terrace to be one of the most romantic choices.

Coffee-flavoured milk
It’s such fun to visit the different places dotted around the region that we’ve extended Project Coffee to Rougemont and Schönried. So watch this space for updates.

But perhaps I should fess up. Yes, I enjoy going out for coffee, but to a true aficionado I’m far from the real deal. I avoid black coffee and don’t mind what ’blend’ I’m offered as long as it comes with lots of hot milk. But happily the instant stuff is a long distant memory.

ANNA CHARLES