Geisha

I'm going to carry so much weight.

And in Milan last year, five of the six finalists used Geisha and six of the 11 coffees the finalists put on stage came from Panama, including Jack's.

Now the competition is in Panama.

Do you think this kind of direction like with the geishas with Panama is the safe bet? Or do you think it's actually maybe a bit of a trap now?

That our coffee trees are the same as theirs.

They come thinking that we have genetically modified and we have, like, this special thing and, and then when they come to the farm, they're like, "Oh, your Catuai is just like mine," or "Your Geisha is just like mine."

Hi, everybody.

I'm David Paparelli, co-founder of M Cultivo, and welcome back to The Cupping Table podcast.

The exchange rate has changed, uh, to double of what it was last year, and as you mentioned, the, the C price has, has gone up.

And usually there was a interesting differential for, like, 84, 85 point coffees, which is the n- the normal coffee you would see in, in Bolivia.

And because there's, like, not too much of a differential, now producers are, are, are thinking of not only having that Catuai base, because there's a lot of Catuai production in Bolivia, but going more into varietals like Pacamara, Geisha, Bourbon, Java, where, it, with better processes or more interesting process, they could really get a difference in price compared to what the, the C-market is at, no? Because the, the, the buyers, uh, you have a lot of coffee buyers in the Caranavi area, uh, uh, cherry buyers or parchment or wet parchment buyers.

They use that C, uh, market as a, as a reference and, and pay a little bit more.

Just a couple months ago, we sourced some, some beans like salsa from India, and then really give people the kind of content around it.

It's 'cause, like, usually when you're in London, everyone's just talking about Geshas, Panamas, Ethiopian coffees are light roasted.

But can we bring some difference, you know? But the difference tastes different when you give them context and when they know the origin, the story behind it.

I think that also goes down to, like, hospitality.

Yeah.

So actually, interestingly, this year, one of the approaches we've taken is we're trying to buy more varietals because in some ways, Geisha has seen this mega rise over the last sort of 10, 15, 20 years.

And...

There are just a lot of amazing coffees, and it's easy to fill our menu with those kind of coffees.

It's very interesting, right? You have the terroir, and then you have the climate, the elevation, and different components give way to a coffee that would taste different from this other coffee.

Even if you grow the same geisha, As they say, the Geisha that is grown in the Philippines is not as good as the Panamanian Geisha.

Well, I agree.

Because the variety should really adapt to the soil.

It doesn't have the characteristics that you would expect and therefore it gets eliminated because the baseline for them is this is what Panamanian washed geisha is.

they started with rebuilding the flavor wheel.

So what is the flavor wheel for a Panama washed Geisha? Let's start there.

Here are the characteristics.

If something comes in that is outside of those characteristics, well, then it can't be this.

And that's why we rely on him to have that conversation.

And I think it's an interesting concept

to, so obviously, you know, the Panamanian Geisha example is very specific to Panama, to Geisha, right? You are having to stretch the bounds of that a little bit, just looking at your auction, the coffees that you're having to score against each other.

They've got a giant freezer that's just got so much...

It must have been millions of dollars worth of Geisha in there.

Those guys do not have a budget.

And they sell it to a lot of the domestic population there.

So I went there maybe three, four years ago.

And I don't know if they still have them anymore, but they had the super auto Mavum.

And I had a Peru Geisha out of that.

And up until then, I was like, can super autos actually deliver like excellent coffee? Sure, they can do gas station coffee, but I had that was like, yep, I'm going for it.