Is instant coffee even possible?

[Mad Dawg]

I mean, instant coffee that tastes even close to freshly-brewed coffee. Aaron's Via thread got me thinking about the problems, and I'm not sure they are even possible to solve.

There are literally thousands of chemical compounds present in brewed coffee, and they start reacting with each other, breaking down, changing as soon as the water hits them. (Truth be told, major, complex reactions begin as soon as the heat of the roast rises much beyond ambient temperature, but that's another thread.) We've all tasted how the flavors change as the coffee cools - that's a direct result of those reactions.

All kinds of approaches have been tried, with freeze-drying probably the most successful (if the term even applies). Still, if you can't even cool coffee without changing its flavor, then freeze-drying can't produce coffee that tastes like the coffee it was produced from.

So I'm not at all sure that "good instant coffee" can ever be anything but but an oxymoron. What do y'all think?