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| Kopi Luwak (Image: Forbes) |
Luwak Coffee is made from coffee cherries that have been eaten by common palm civets, which use their keen sense of smell to select the choicest and ripest beans. The digestion process removes the flesh from the crimson Sumatran berry and the beans, supposedly sweeter as a result of having passed through the animal, are hand-collected from the jungle floor.
Hacienda La Esmeralda (Boquete - Panama, $104 per pound)
Hacienda La Esmeralda's Geisha coffee set an online auction record when it sold for over $50 dollars per pound, unroasted, on May 30, 2006. The coffee, which is grown in the shade of old guava trees, has been widely and enthusiastically praised for its flavor and aroma. In April, it placed first in the SCAA "Best of Panama" competition, with a score of 94.6 out of 100.
Island of St. Helena Coffee Company (St. Helena, $79 per pound)
This very exclusive coffee is grown on the island of St. Helena, 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa. Cultivated from a varietal brought from Yemen in 1730, it owes much of its success to Napoleon Bonaparte, who started a vogue by praising the coffee during his exile on the island. St. Helena coffee dropped from sight for more than a century, until David R. Henry began exporting it again in the early 1990s. Production is low (about 12 tons per year), and once again, demand is high.
El Injerto (Huehuetenango - Guatemala, $25 / $50 per pound)
This boutique lot of coffee by El Injerto, specially prepared for the Cup of Excellence auction, is from the region of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. It recently won first prize in the 2006 Cup of Excellence. This coffee is likely to retail for more than $50 per pound, after it has been roasted.
Fazenda Santa Ines (Minas Gerais - Brazil,$50 per pound green at auction)
This coffee is the highest rated in Cup of Excellence history, with a combined score of 95.85 points out of 100. Only 12 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags of this limited production coffee were available at auction; they were purchased green by Caffe Artigiano, an independently owned café in Canada, and two Australian roasters. You can't go out and buy a bag, but cups are available at Caffe Artigiano and, occasionally and with much fanfare, other specialty shops around the world.
Blue Mountain (Wallenford Estate - Jamaica, $49 per pound)
A long-admired coffee, Jamaica Blue Mountain is controversial because of high prices and variable quality. There has also been a fair amount of counterfeit Jamaica Blue Mountain on the market; remember that "Jamaica Blue Mountain style" and "Jamaica Blue Mountain Blend" may contain little or no authentic product. The real thing is well known for its mild taste and aroma. About 85% of all Blue Mountain produced is sold to Japan.
Los Planes (Citala - El Salvador,($30 per 12 ounces /$40 per pound)
Los Planes from El Salvador ranked number two in the 2006 El Salvador Cup of Excellence competition, with an international jury scoring it 93.52 out of 100. It's not yet available to consumers.
Kona (Hawaii, $30 per 14 ounces / $34 per pound)
In the late 1820s, the British brought Brazilian coffee trees to Kona's rich volcanic soil, hard-working family farmers and perfect climate. True small-farm, estate-grade Kona coffees are known for their clean, pleasant, mild flavors and good aftertaste. Nevertheless, Kona is also a controversial coffee, due to its high price, and scandals in which inauthentic beans were packaged as Kona.
Starbucks Rwanda Blue Bourbon (Gatare/Karengera - Rwanda, $24 per pound)
Starbucks began visiting coffee-washing stations in Rwanda in 2004 and found these high-quality beans in Gatare and Karengera for its Black Apron Exclusives offering. Until recently, Rwandan farmers grew low-quality beans as their main cash crop
Yauco Selecto AA (Puerto Rico, $22 per pound)
Puerto Rican coffee from the Yauco region represented a standard of excellence in production that many other countries sought to imitate by the 1890s. Grown on the Southwestern Mountains of the island, this "Island" coffee is known for its mild flavor. Price is determined by the cost of production and the availability.
Fazenda Sao Benedito (Minas Gerias - Brazil, $21 per pound)
Brazilian coffees are known for their nutty, sweet and exceptional bittersweet and chocolate-roast tastes. Fazenda Sao Benedito is part of the Sertao group, a family run association of coffee producers in the south of the state of Minas Gerias. This group of producers had ten coffees out of the top 36 in the Cup of Excellence 2005
Source: Forbes
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