Today’s 2012 Panama Esmeralda Especial Auction earned Hacienda Esmeralda an estimated $806,133. You can check out our earlier feature on the auction for a little context, and here’s some highlights from the bidding action:

Top high bid for the natural processed Esmeralada was $66, paid SAZA Coffee of Japan, for one of two lots of Esmeralda’s Mario Natural coffee, harvested in February in the Jaramillo region at 1,500-1,700 meters. This price exceeds the highest price paid in last year’s washed Esmeralda auction, which was $51.50 from the WATARU Group for OGAWA Coffee.

Giuli Coffee Ltd. purchased the other lot of Mario Natural, for a per-pound price of $65.50.

Five lots from two natural processed batches of Esmeralda were on auction; the second, dubbed Colgá Natural, topped out at $37 even, again from the WATARU Group.

All of the Esmeralda natural processed coffees were purchased by Asian buyers, but if you live outside of the Asia, there’s still plenty of tasty, washed Esmeralda headed your way, from buyers like George Howell Coffee Company, Stumptown, Phil & Sebastian Coffee Roasters, The Coffee Collective, and the green wholesale & importers at InterAmerican, one of the largest volume buyers at this year’s Esmeralda auction.

Read a full listing here, via StoneWorks Specialty Coffee Auction.

Correction: Originally quoted total bids at $1,585,416. This was inaccurate.

Roasters the world over have registered and received samples for the annual Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda Special Auction, happening May 15th. This year, Hacienda Esmeralda experimented with natural processing for some of their geisha coffees, drying cherry the sun and completing the process in mechanical dryers. The auction will include several lots from two natural batches, the Colgá Natural, harvested from January through March and grown in the Cañas Verdes region at 1,400 meters and Mario Natural, harvested in February in the Jaramillo region at 1,500-1,700 meters.

Natural processed coffees are undoubtedly a very big deal, and producers the world over are experimenting with this method to enhance quality in places that you’d ordinarily find washed coffees. These naturals are sometimes outstanding and can sometimes be disasters – riddled with defects due to any number of missteps throughout the process. This could be due to climate but is more likely due to the lack of experience.

One prominent roaster isn’t afraid to mince words on the Esmeralda Natural lots, on Twitter wrote “The natural processed Esmeralda is fucking disgusting. Why would you screw up a beautiful coffee like that by fermenting it in a cherry?” Some agreed, some disagreed, and some defended the Peterson’s decision to try something new.

Only time will tell how much the experimental lots will fetch. When Esmeralda made waves several years ago, the gesha variety exploded in popularity in Latin America. If the natural lots prove to be lucrative, it could very well send a message to producers that naturally processed coffees are worth the risk.

Last year, Hacienda Esmeralda sold eighty lots, with the top lot of Esmeralda fetching $15,450.00 for six bags, at $51.50 a pound to Japan based WATARU group for OGAWA Coffee.

Panama Esmeralda Auction online at StoneWorks on May 15th. Bidding on all lots start at $10.00 per pound.

World Fair Trade Day is next Saturday, so you can expect a glut of FT articles to appear in your news reader throughout the week this week. Fortunately, writers like Erin Meister are out there to take on the Fair Trade assignment, and pen a easy to read, smart, and informed primer on the subject. Meister takes her readers at Serious Eats on the basic 101 Fair Trade journey, and she doesn’t mince words on the criticism Fair Trade receives on quality:

While the message and the mission behind Fair Trade–certified coffees is commendable and defendable, be aware that good intentions don’t always make for delicious coffee: As with any consumer product—especially the edible ones—if the coffee isn’t grown, harvested, processed, roasted, or brewed well, all the good intentions and fairness certifying in the world aren’t going to make it taste good. (And if it doesn’t taste good, you’ll probably be less inclined to buy it again—which of course sends those good intentions right on down the drain.)

Buying fair, sustainable, and delicious coffee isn’t an act of charity: It’s a moral, political, and taste-based act, and your tastebuds are ultimately the chorus of with the loudest opinions. So while I certainly and wholeheartedly advocate for coffee drinkers to seek out responsibly traded coffee, I also acknowledge that it might take a little tasting around to find the source that’s a perfect fit.

Even more interesting is the active role Meister is playing in moderating an avalanche of comments. Commenter Larikatz says, “I’d rather have good coffee than fair coffee. I don’t buy so-called fair trade nor organic or special labels. Since the price for fair trade is set, what’s to keep the farmer from selling his better quality beans elsewhere for a better price and handing over his poorer quality beans to the fair trade market for a guaranteed price? Like a commercial for Kashi, it sounds all happy smiling sunshine, but the consumer is not getting the best end of the bargain unless all the consumer wants is a clean conscious.”

Meister comes back with this:

But to speak to your (potentially rhetorical) question, “What’s to keep the farmer from selling his better quality beans elsewhere for a better price and handing over his poorer quality beans to the fair trade market for a guaranteed price?” I offer a couple of answers.

The average coffee farmer will sell all of his coffee — good and bad and everything in between — to buyers that purchase it based on quality. That quality is determined by the industry-standard practice of cupping, a method of flavor and aroma assessment. If the farmer sells all of his coffee in a single lot, that lot will be cupped and scored accordingly based on its quality. If that farmer sorts his lots — by density, by section of his farm, by variety, what have you — each one will be cupped and scored accordingly. The price is then set based on the cup score. So while there is price negotiation, there isn’t terribly much room for conniving on the farmer’s part, or “tricking” a Fair Trade purchaser into buying lesser coffee for a higher price.

Secondly, what Fair Trade certification has done is encourage farmers to enter into democratic organizations or co-ops, which means they operate as a group. Each member is responsible and answers to his or her co-op or group leadership, which makes quality and price more standard and less of a gamble. It also means that those kinds of buying/selling decisions are made en masse, rather than by individual farmer members.

Read the whole thing here via Serious Drinks.

Further Reading:

Catch up on Erin Meister’s take on the 2012 Symposium here on Sprudge.

Intelligentsia’s Bolivia Takesi microlot, a Typica coffee sourced via Direct Trade from the Yanacachi region just east of La Paz, is now commercially available via Intelligensia’s website. Takesi is grown at 2450 meters; Intelligentsia is offering this coffee for $71/12oz bag. Takesi was the coffee used by both John Martin and Charles Babinski in last weekend’s SWRBC, helping Mr. Martin place first in the Brewers Cup and Mr. Babinski take second in the Barista Competition. Here’s some notes notes notes from the Intelli website:

The coffee begins with prominent floral and botanical notes, complemented by the juiciness of white grape and Asian pear. Green apple and key lime acidity with hints of candied tamarind and dried cranberry linger on the palate making for a tart but sweet finish.

Learn more and order your own pricey-but-worth-it poundage via Intelligentsia online. Given this coffee’s fine pedigree and pleasurable characteristics, the Dowager Countess surely approves.

There’s more bad news out of Jamaica, appearing via Associated Press waiver wire:

A few years ago in this mist-shrouded mountain town, steep slopes were quilted with some of the world’s most valuable coffee trees. Farmers scrambled to increase acreage and pickers painstakingly filled wooden boxes with ripened berries at harvest time.

Today, much of the terrain is overgrown with underbrush and bamboo as a declining luxury market in Japan and a voracious beetle drive thousands of frustrated small farmers away from tiny plots of leased highlands.

Times are hard for the growers of Jamaica’s legendary coffee, especially those on isolated, low-tech farms such as the ones in Brandon Hill, a one-road enclave with no traffic lights.

The article goes on to discuss how the shifting of Japanese tastes have all but crippled the island’s growing regions, as neglected farms become infested with borer beetles. Want to know more about Jamaican coffee, and specifically, why the specialty market in America has all but left it behind? We refer to the experts at Sweet Maria’s:

We have not sold Jamaican coffee in over four years now – the samples are just DOA – simply no fragrance, no aroma, nor origin flavors, just roast taste. There’s nothing there to encourage me to offer it, at any price. Jamaica is a mild coffee and is not going to konk you over the head even at it’s best…

…It is an excellent mild, lush coffee… sometimes. But it is can also be downright bad. In these cases, it’s nothing short of a crime to pay those prices for coffee. On top of that, a lot of coffee sold as Jamaican is not true Jamacia Blue Mountain, or is blended. If you pay $12 per lb for Jamaican coffee, it cannot be true Blue Mtn. but either the lower grown Jamaica High Mountain, or most likely a blend that contains a small percentage of JBM.

Learn more about Jamaican coffee:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Think Coffee is pleased to offer an all-expenses paid trip to origin with Think’s Farmer Relations Manager, Matt Fury, to the second place winner of the NERBC barista competition. The trip will be tailored to the needs and desires of the recipient. Think Coffee has been to every farm and has a personal relationship with every farmer-producer represented in our blends.

That means there’s trips to origin on the boards for the top two finishers at #NERBC. Exciting stuff, and you heard it here first on Sprudge.com!

S. Amanda Caudill is a doctoral student and part-time NYT science blogger, currently working in Costa Rica assessing mammal diversity on coffee farms. She and her colleagues found a fascinating link between coffee farms near forest patches and the reduction of awful cherry borer beetles, a detestable sub-phylum whose only goal is to get its grubby little beetle teeth all over delicious coffee cherries. The borer beetle is plaguing coffee crops worldwide and Ms. Caudill (and her peers) may have found an environmentally sound way to cull those awful bugs:

If there are forest patches next to coffee farms, the forests may act as a barrier and reduce coffee berry borer outbreaks without the use of toxic chemicals or large amounts of labor. So part of my research — in addition to investigating mammal biodiversity — is to understand if these forest patches next to coffee farms could increase habitat value and provide corridors for mammals.

This “coffee-forest matrix,” as it’s called, could be a win-win situation, creating a barrier for the coffee pests while protecting forests and wildlife habitat. I am interested to find out if this theory holds true. We will have to wait and see what shakes out after all the data is collected and analyzed.

Read the rest of the blog here and check out her earlier work at the Scientist at Work section at the NYT.

Image from MauiFeed.com. Secondary image via Thumbelina:

Roasters of the world – are you single and looking? What if we told your dream account was just one click away? This your chance to rep your coffee company in a one-of-a-kind setting: the upcoming Coffee Common service at TED 2012. Your coffee will be served by some of the best baristas on earth. Violinists, political prisoners, brain scientists, novelists, academics, business leaders, and Bill Clinton will be your new regulars. Sounds too good to be true? It’s not; roasters are now eligible to apply for inclusion at the next Coffee Common event:

If selected, roasters will be asked to provide the following: 200 lbs of a single roast of a single coffee, which will be prepared in brew methods like handcrafted drip, espresso, siphon pot and aeropress. $1000 financial support which will be used to cover a dinner for baristas To apply, please complete the following form and mail a 12 ounce sample of the coffee…

Full listing available here. All submissions are due by February 8th.

Via HuffPo:

Kona coffee growers want Hawaii’s labeling law modified to provide more details on packages of coffee blends that contain Hawaii-grown beans.

Currently, coffee blends sold in the state that contain Hawaii-grown coffee must disclose what percentage is grown in the islands, and it must be at least 10 percent. The Kona Coffee Farmers Association said Thursday that it wants the state Legislature to consider a bill it has drafted that would also identify where the remainder of the blend is grown.

If the association is successful an example of a package label would read, “90 percent Panamanian coffee, 10 percent Kona coffee.”

The state senator from Kona said Thursday he plans to introduce the bill at the end of the month. “I respect the local community and Kona coffee is a big issue for us,” state Sen. Josh Green, D-Milolii-Waimea, said.

Next year buy Grandma Tu-Tu something from that big haole Pete Licata.

This feature comes from our “Not New News, But Still Interesting” desk – California coffee is no passing fad, confined merely to the kitchens of Finca La West Oakland. A farm near Santa Barbara, featured by the LA Times and elsewhere, is producing coffee with some interesting attachments and mysterious endorsements.

Jay Ruskey (of Good Land Organics) has been growing and cultivating coffee  in the Goleta area of SoCal for the last several years. According to this interview with Food GPS, Ruskey’s partner Mark Gaskell first sourced the coffee trees from El Salvador, taking with him back to California shrubs of the Catturra, Typica and Amarillo varietals. Ruskey is harvesting, processing and self-roasting his coffees at Good Land Organics – a process that hints at wider ambitions:

We feel that it’s important to vertically integrate. One of the models we’ve looked at is the Kona coffee model. They’ve been successful growing in an area that has high labor costs by producing their own coffee on the farm, not only growing it, but also processing it and post-havesting and roasting it, including doing farm tours and selling their coffee from the farm. That’s been a very successful model. So we think with the Kona model and the interest in farm tours – like some of the wineries have in Santa Barbara – that type of hybrid approach is going to be a successful model for coffee in the Santa Barbara region.

Buried elsewhere within that Food GPS interview, Ruskey mentions that he’s received advice and a farm visit from Price Peterson, he of Hacienda La Esmeralda fame. More interesting still, Mr. Ruskey seeks to form a Santa Barbera Coffee Cooperative, and has been distributing coffee seeds to nearby farms.

Good Lands Coffee is grown at an elevation of about 600 feet, which is not much of an elevation at all, especially in terms of specialty coffee (as a quick reference, the aforementioned Hacienda La Esmeralda coffee is grown at more than 1500 meters, more than 5000 feet above sea level). But it’s still pretty exciting stuff – and according to this second interview with the website “Eat Drink Explore” (unpunctuated), Ruskey’s Santa Barbara coffee has been vetted by coffee types in the know:

According to Ruskey, coffee experts were then invited to taste test the new product and subsequently gave encouraging reviews.

“They said that we have some promising coffee,” Ruskey told us.  So, the growing operation continued with about a dozen varieties of beans and more than 1,500 plants now being grown in the Santa Barbara area.

Our question for you is this – have you tasted Jay Ruskey’s California-grown coffee? Were you one of the “coffee experts” invited to cup recent or past crops? Let’s get our sticky hands on some more information about these coffees – any SoCal area Sprudge readers feel like tracking down this stuff at the Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market? If you go, take pictures, and please send them along to us at californiacoffee@sprudge.com – we’ll post shots and notes on the site.