There's a growing anti-drug sentiment that should be a great tailwind.
It's hard for me to find as good tasting a bean as it is with non-decaf. I've tried subscription services or pay huge shipping and product premium from some boutique retailer, the beans are always just ok. Decaf still doesn't get enough priority as the product itself, always an afterthought it feels like.
I drink Stumptown which I grind at home for my espresso machine -- their caffeinated Hair Bender blend in the morning, and then in the afternoon I'll often have their decaf Trapper Creek (Swiss water process) on the days I don't need an extra jolt.
It tastes perfectly great to me. Maybe my palette isn't refined enough.
But decaffeination is always going to alter/remove flavor somewhat. So if you've tried high-quality versions like Stumptown and find them lacking, I'm not sure it's even chemically possible.
(Also I'm not super clear -- have you found high-quality decaf and you just wish it were more common? What brand(s) are high-quality? Or you haven't found it, and you're complaining that they're all "just ok"?)
If the above sounds confusing, consider red wine vs white wine… visual inspection alone would get you 100% accuracy.
I used to believe decaf processing would have to change the taste, but empirically, with admittedly untrained tasters (but ones who know coffee very well), we couldn’t tell.
https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/15/decaf-coffee-is-finally-wi...
They offer 7 different coffees. Only 1 is decaf! As if it were a "flavor"