World's Best Coffee?

Coming Soon… Limited Edition Esmeralda Special "Mario San Jose"

Esmeralda Special, from Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama, is widely regarded as the magnum opus of the coffee world and could be placed alongside Jamaican Blue Mountain as one of the rarest and most prestigious. Very soon, we will be welcoming some of this amazing coffee to the Roastery and only 500 limited edition packs will be available (with a choice of whole beans or ground coffee.)

Esmeralda Special, from the Peterson family who supply us with the wonderful Diamond Mountain coffee, only becomes available once a year through their very own online auction. In 2009, 7 unique batches – split into micro-lots of 300 lbs of coffee – were available to specialist roasters and retailers around the world. Each batch represented a particular growing area and harvesting period but all of the coffee is from the mystical Geisha Arabica varietal, whose roots can be directly traced back to the wild coffee growing areas of Ethiopia.

What makes this coffee so unique?

It has also won countless awards, often judged by some of the world’s best coffee tasters:

It has placed 1st in the Speciality Coffee Associations of Panama’s prestigious Best of Panama competition every time it has been entered (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009)

It is recognised as the best coffee from any Rainforest Alliance certified farm, having won the Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality competition in 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009

It can also be one of the world’s most expensive coffees, holding the online auction record (over and above the price paid for any Cup of Excellence award winner) at $130/lb of coffee.

Most importantly is the aroma and flavour, more East African in profile than anything found in Latin America. Aromas of mandarin orange, jasmine, cloves and redcurrants all excitedly mingle with deliciously sweet, transparently clean and vibrantly citrusy flavours. Elegant, silky and beautifully balanced. In a way, it’s more “tea-like” and it’s a surprise that coffee can taste like this.

We bought a micro-lot of Batch 4, “Mario San José”, as one of our favourites on the table. Grown in the Los Mario section of the farm near Jaramillo, where the traditional award winning Esmeralda Special comes from, the coffee was grown at an altitude of 1500 – 1650 metres and harvested during March 2009.

We expect the coffee to be available from around mid-July onwards and we will begin taking pre-orders within the next week or so as we will only roast small batches at a time and the coffee will be dispatched immediately following each roast.