The Toast of Roasts - Bryn Nelson

When the auction began on the afternoon of May 29, six cartels had set their sights on 500 pounds of an almost mythical Panamanian product. For eight hours, they bid and counterbid online, with one determined group lodging a total of 27 separate offers—all in vain. After a frenzied tit-for-tat between the final two contenders, the price for the juggernaut known as La Esmeralda Special steamrolled past the record set the year before, fetching an astonishing $130 per pound. The winning bid was more than 11 times the price of the auction’s next-highest-earning coffee bean.

Yes, coffee beans.

Anything described as “explosively floral on the palate” by the Specialty Coffee Association of America might be expected to attract a certain amount of attention, especially after being named the world’s best coffee by the association for three years running. A judge from Kansas City scored it a perfect 100 in this year’s Best of Panama competition. A Seattle coffee executive blogged that “its aroma practically sings to you from between endless rows of other exemplary coffees.” A New York barista dubbed it the “undisputed heavyweight champion of coffee.”

La Esmeralda Special is all the more remarkable given that, a decade ago, the spindly trees that produced the beans were little more than windbreaks owned by the family of a prominent American banker. But while the hefty price may be a curiosity, Esmeralda’s popularity signals a broader shift in an industry where quantity, not quality, has long reigned supreme. In a post-Starbucks world, specialty coffee has become a hot commodity, and La Esmeralda Special is far from alone in the upper echelons.

“I think we’re seeing a fundamental shift in the coffee industry in terms of making coffee much more of a personal and exciting beverage than it ever has been,” says Susie Spindler, executive director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, an organization in Missoula, Montana, that runs the Cup of Excellence competitions and online auctions in eight countries.

The most recent rush of excitement has been over a roasted bean variety called Geisha. Originally from Ethiopia, the relatively low-yielding but disease-resistant Geisha trees were transplanted to Central America in the 1950s. They were soon yanked from coffee farms, however, as the market shifted to mass production in response to exploding demand.

In 1964, Swedish-born Rudolph Peterson, then chief executive of Bank of America, bought Hacienda La Esmeralda, a dairy and beef farm in Panama’s Chiriqui highlands. The property was eventually passed on to his son Price, who in 1996 expanded the family’s holdings, buying a nearby farm with a “mish-mash” of coffee trees on its upper reaches, according to Price’s son Daniel. Almost immediately, the family could smell and taste something special in the cups of coffee produced from the farm’s beans.

When they isolated the taller Geishas and planted more at a slightly higher altitude for the 2003 to 2004 season, the coffee really blossomed, Daniel says. In 2004, La Esmeralda Special swept the intense Best of Panama and Rainforest Alliance cupping competitions—at which the few dozen entrants with the best aroma, sweetness, mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste, and balance are identified—and set the first of its auction records with an online price of $21 a pound. “This is a flavor that had not been found in the Americas,” Daniel says. It can now be found at high-end online retailers and some of the best coffeehouses in the U.S. and Canada.

At a basic level, industry insiders are increasingly defining well-regarded specialty coffees by what they are not: blended or—Sacre bleu!—French roasted. Jeff Taylor, co-owner of PT’s Coffee Roasting Co., in Topeka, Kansas, says top buyers, wholesalers, and retailers are more interested in single-origin coffees and lighter roasts that highlight a bean’s best features.

Like a vineyard’s grand reserve wine, the finest coffee beans are often found in microlots, or small subsets of farms like Hacienda La Esmeralda, where, as Taylor puts it, “all of the stars align.” In the partial shade of the higher-elevation lot, Esmeralda’s Geisha trees may not be models of productivity, but the slower cycles let them pack more sugars and oils into their beans and turn heads in coffee competitions.

Coffee enthusiasts also make comparisons with the wine industry’s success in marketing nuanced vintages; some boast that chemists have identified about 850 natural compounds contributing to the flavor of roasted coffee—many more than in a classic Bordeaux. An Ethiopian coffee called Biloya Selection One is acclaimed by PT’s Coffee for its “syrupy pineapple sweetness that’s supported with deep blueberry overtones,” while an offering from Panama’s Bambito Estate is lauded by Groundwork Coffee Co., a Los Angeles firm, for its “juicy, apple-cider-like texture and sweetness that pairs decadently with tones of dark chocolate, pepper, and clove.”

On a leafy side street in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, other discoveries are showcased at Café Grumpy, where cheerful baristas preside over steady sales of individually brewed, single-origin coffees and espressos. Coffeehouse co-owner Caroline Bell says she secured a bag of the prized Esmeralda beans before May’s recordbreaking auction, through a roaster who had a direct relationship with the farm. A 16-ounce cup of the famous java was the most expensive item on her August menu and, at $8, was far closer to what nearby restaurants were charging for a glass of pinot noir.

With its notes of Italian bergamot, orange rind, lavender, and jasmine, the coffee was worth every cent, according to Café Grumpy barista Jay Murdock. Customers apparently agreed, snapping up about 80 pounds of the café’s 100-pound allotment before Labor Day. (The café is saving the rest for the holidays.) Bell says that ultra-discriminating coffee drinkers are akin to those who shop at farmers markets: It’s the difference between buying waxy tomatoes in a supermarket and springing for a Brandywine heirloom cultivar. Or perhaps it’s the difference between the aroma of a boxed wine and the toast-and-cherry-tinged nose of a ’95 Shafer cabernet sauvignon.