Boquete Panama Geisha coffee sells for a whopping $170.20 per pound

May 25, 2010
Boquete, Panama
Reuters

Panama’s coveted geisha coffee, often described as the champagne of coffee for its subtle jasmine-like flavors, broke an auction record on Tuesday, selling for $170.20 a pound.

The winning lot, sold at an online auction, was from the Hacienda La Esmeralda farm known as the prime grower of the coveted beans. It was bought by Japanese bidder Saza Coffee for more than 100 times the average coffee price, now hovering around $1.30 a pound on New York futures markets.

Enthusiastic Japanese buyers have fueled most of the new demand for Central America’s highest-end coffee as U.S. buyers, more frugal after the financial crisis, have shied away from expensive coffee-shop drinks in favor of brewing at home.

But the record price for 400 pounds of geisha coffee — a total of $68,080 — still surprised the farm owners.

“We were not expecting this at all this year,” said Daniel Peterson of the family-owned La Esmeralda finca, high in the western mountains of Panama. In 2007 the farm sold its prized coffee for $130 a pound, setting an earlier record.

Geisha coffee trees are a rare variety with Ethiopian heritage brought to Panama in 1963 from Costa Rica.

The coffee was sold on the Stoneworks coffee auction platform as part of an offering of some of Panama’s highest-rated beans from this season’s harvest.

Last week, a La Esmeralda-exclusive auction netted between $20 to $36.50 a pound but Peterson said the farm’s best was reserved for Tuesday’s auction.

“It was our best coffee of the year,” Peterson said.

(Reporting by Sean Mattson; Editing by David Gregorio