Specialty Beans From Costa Rica Win 27,000% Premium at Coffee Auction
- At auction, specialty grade feteches ‘crazy’ $300 a pound
- Result ‘far exceeded expections’ amid general market slump
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At an auction dubbed the Cup of Excellence, a coffee grower from the town of Copey de Dota in Costa Rica won a record premium for his specialty Geisha beans -- 27,000 percent above the benchmark for the standard arabica variety.
“It’s crazy,” Michael Calderon, the 26-year-old son of the farmer who grew the coffee, said in a telephone interview from San Jose, the site of the auction. “We were not expecting these results. The place, the altitude, the soil, the processing and drying of the beans, all have direct influence on the quality.”