Panama Geisha: The World's Most Expensive Coffee Premium Coffee Brands

Professional Coffee Knowledge Exchange

For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style)

An Aromatic Journey

When you smell the coffee beans directly, you'll notice a fruity candy aroma; when brewed into coffee, you'll detect a very fragrant jasmine scent; when hot, you can better taste the sweet lychee and honey peach flavors.

Baristas describe it as: "Like perfume."

The World's Most Expensive Coffee

"601 Geisha Coffee" (Esmeralda Geisha 601) was the champion coffee at the 2017 Best of Panama competition and broke the world record to become the most expensive coffee in history. FrontStreet Coffee only has a few kilograms, making it extremely precious.

The King of Specialty Coffee

"Every mid-year, Panamanian estates submit their best coffee beans for competition. After dozens of judges and more than a week of cupping evaluations, the year's champion coffee is selected." And "601 Geisha Coffee" is precisely this year's champion coffee. "601 refers to the online auction amount, and this year's auction price broke the world record at $601 per pound!"

It turns out that Geisha coffee has always been regarded as the king of specialty coffee because it's difficult to cultivate and therefore not abundant in production. "Geisha coffee has high soil requirements, needing to be planted at high altitudes, and the coffee trees for this variety grow particularly tall, making harvesting difficult. Therefore, very few people are willing to grow it."

At $601 per pound, this coffee is nearly double the world record of $350 per pound from four years ago. Besides being precious due to its scarcity, its cupping score is also remarkably high. "Generally, specialty coffee has a cupping score of 80 points or above, but '601 Geisha Coffee' broke the world record with 94.11 points!"

Natural Processing Preserves Coffee's Sweetness

The processing methods for green coffee beans include washed, natural, and honey processing. Washed coffee ferments through water, making the coffee's flavor cleaner. "The estate used the more difficult-to-control natural processing method for this batch of Geisha coffee beans, hoping to preserve the sweetness within," Herman noted.

"A coffee bean itself has fruit pulp, and the pulp contains sugar. Because it's not soaked in water, the sugar from the pulp will penetrate into the coffee bean during the drying process, creating the coffee's sweetness. Therefore, '601 Geisha Coffee' has lychee and honey peach flavors, which is also what makes natural processed coffee special."

The Essence of Fine Coffee

The author believes that a quality cup of specialty coffee can actually let everyone taste nature's sweetness. "Good coffee should be like fruit tea and flower tea, possessing the flavor of its origin region, not the flavor of roasting. When coffee beans are burnt, what you taste is the bitter flavor of burning, while the flavor of seeds should be what nature brings to you."

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473