It’s rare, it’s from Panama and is said to be the world’s
best-tasting coffee, but is it really worth 75 US dollars a cup?
By: Ringo Bones
Move over coffee lowak, there’s a new Panamanian coffee that’s
rather “conventional” – i.e. it has not gone through any animal’s digestive
tract – and yet it has been recently touted as the world’s best-tasting coffee,
better in fact than the world famous civet cat digested coffee beans known as
coffee lowak by a significant margin. But is it really worth its 75 US dollars
asking price – as in twice that the average price of the “infamous” coffee
lowak that’s being served in trendy Seattle coffee bars and other hipster
coffee bars across the United States? Unfortunately, this upstart coffee has a
rather storied reason justifying its 75 US dollar a cup asking price.
This upstart coffee variant is known as Elida Geisha 803
coffee and the 75 US dollar a cup asking price is via the Klatch Coffee
Roasters located in the Bay Area. The price comes as no surprise given that the
raw beans costs 803 US dollars a pound and up to 1,200 US dollars a pound when
properly roasted. By contrast, the current going price for coffee lowak is
around 100 to 600 US dollars a pound. But many people are probably asking what
makes Elida Geisha 803 much more expensive than its closest competitor?
Back in 2018, Panamanian coffee producer Elida Estate broke
the record for the highest auction price at the Best of Panama competition when
its Geisha Green Tip Natural was auctioned off at 803 US dollars a pound – hence
the number 803 of the coffee’s moniker. Of the 100 total pounds of Elida Geisha
803 auctioned at the event, San Francisco based Klatch Coffee Roasters owns 10
pounds worth of the famed coffee in the United States. The company plans to
split their supply between their coffee shops in San Francisco and Los Angeles –
the region better known as the “Bay Area”. This means that there are only 80
cups of the blend available for coffee drinkers in the whole of the United
States. The lucky few who tasted the brew so far swear that it is by far the
best cup of coffee that they’ve ever tasted – although a majority of them are rather
quite skeptical of its “steep” 75 US dollar a cup price tag.
