El Nino is Mother Nature’s way of telling us we’ve ruined coffee

October 8, 2026 — 11:30am

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First there was the cappuccino. Then there was the frappuccino. Then that gave way to the crappuccino – a chameleon-like, caramel-spiked, pumpkin-spiced, hyper-blended atrocity-in-a-keep-cup. OK, I made that last one up, but I’m sure someone in Sydney would happily order it and pay a small fortune for it.

All that came before the World Meteorological Organisation predicted a strong El Nino event this summer, which is expected to play havoc with cocoa, coffee and vanilla crops in coffee-producing nations such as Brazil and Vietnam, where local growers are already struggling with higher temperatures and reduced rainfall.

So Australian coffee drinkers can soon look forward to sampling the El Ninoccino, a nice warm cup of absolutely nothing that’s the inevitable result of export bans, energy price spikes and the rising cost of fertiliser and fuel, driven by conflict in the Middle East.

For forlorn caffeine aficionados recently released from the bonds of credit card machine surcharge enslavement, the sudden emergence of the El........

© The Sydney Morning Herald