Coffee Sketcher

Serkan Sağsöz

Properties3
descriptionTurkish barista champion turned Dubai roaster, and the man who bought the most expensive coffee ever sold at auction.
tagsperson, turkey, dubai, roaster, geisha
aliasesSerkan Sagsoz, Serkan Sagsöz

5 min read

Serkan Sağsöz

Serkan Sağsöz is a Turkish barista champion who moved to Dubai and, in his roastery’s first week of trading, bought the single most expensive coffee lot ever sold at auction. He is head roaster and co-founder of Julith Coffee in Dubai (Most Expensives, accessed 2026-07-23), and the company’s own site describes its team as “led by Turkish Barista Champion Serkan Sagsoz” (Julith Coffee — Our Story, accessed 2026-07-23).

Story

Competing in Turkey

Sağsöz made his name on the competition circuit. He is reported to hold three Turkish Barista Championship titles, and to be a former Turkish coffee-roasting champion (Most Expensives, accessed 2026-07-23) — the “three-time” count is repeated independently in a podcast interview with him (The Cupping Table, accessed 2026-07-23). A barista championship is a timed, judged competition where competitors serve espresso, milk drinks and a signature drink to a panel; national winners go on to the world final.

To verify

  • Which years he won, and under which body. No source consulted here gives the years, scores, or the exact name of the competition. National championships are usually run by a country’s Specialty Coffee Association chapter, but no source confirms an “SCA Turkey” attribution for his titles — check World Coffee Events or Turkish national championship archives before quoting.
  • The count itself. Julith’s own website (Our Story) calls him simply “Turkish Barista Champion” without a number. “Three-time” and the roasting title come from secondary reporting, not from him or an official record.

Dubai and Julith Coffee

He relocated to Dubai to build a specialty coffee business (The Cupping Table, accessed 2026-07-23) and co-founded Julith Coffee — a roastery, brew lounge, concept store and social space in the Al Quoz warehouse district, at Kunooz Warehouse 1, 6th Street, Al Quoz Industrial First (Julith Coffee — Our Story, accessed 2026-07-23). The venue opened on 1 August 2025.

The record purchase

Five days after opening, on 6 August 2025, Julith won the top lot at the Best of Panama auction: the entire 20 kg of washed Geisha from the Nido plot at Hacienda La Esmeralda, scored 98/100 — the highest in that auction’s history — for 30,204 per kilo. The full figures, and how the coffee is being served, are documented on the Julith Coffee note.

Sağsöz described the cup as having “white floral notes like jasmine, citrus flavors like orange and bergamot, and a hint of apricot and peach. It’s like honey — delicate and sweet” (Most Expensives, accessed 2026-07-23).

To verify

  • Price per serving. A YouTube feature on Julith says the coffee is available “for the low low price of 980) per double espresso reported elsewhere and already recorded on the Julith Coffee note. The price may have changed, or the two may count different serving sizes — confirm with Julith before quoting either.
  • Founder vs co-founder. The same video calls Julith “founded by Turkish Barista Champion Serkan Sağsöz”, i.e. sole founder; other reporting calls him co-founder, and Julith’s own site says only that he leads the team. Treat the exact corporate role as unconfirmed.
  • The headline price in Australian dollars. The video quotes “over 604,080 at 2025 exchange rates rather than a separate figure — but only the US-dollar total is corroborated by auction reporting.
  • When he moved to Dubai. The interview says “recently”; no source gives a year.

Liberica advocacy

In a podcast interview titled “Serkan Sagsoz | Barista Champion, Dubai Entrepreneur and His Belief in Liberica Coffee’s Potential”, he argues that Liberica — a coffee species that is neither Arabica nor Robusta, historically dismissed as low quality — deserves a place in specialty coffee (The Cupping Table, accessed 2026-07-23). No specific Liberica projects, farms, or lots of his are named in the sources consulted here.

That combination — paying a world record for the most exclusive Arabica on earth while campaigning for the species everyone else ignores — is the clearest thing to know about how he operates.

Sources

  1. Julith Coffee — Our Story (official site) — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. Best of Panama — official competition site — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. Most Expensives — The world’s most expensive coffee — accessed 2026-07-23
  4. Coffee as Culture — $30,204 a kilo: what the world’s most expensive coffee says — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. Qahwa World — Luxury Geisha coffee sale, Dubai 2025 — accessed 2026-07-23
  6. The Cupping Table — Serkan Sagsoz: Barista Champion, Dubai Entrepreneur and His Belief in Liberica Coffee’s Potential — accessed 2026-07-23
  7. The Man Who Bought the Most Expensive Coffee in The World — JULITH COFFEE w SERKAN SAĞSÖZ! — accessed 2026-07-23

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