The Panama Hartmann Geisha
A throwback to 2014
Back in 2014 I experienced a geisha so good it made me blush.
I trolled through the achieves to see if I wrote a review of it at the time, and while I didn’t I did find an interview I did with then head roaster at Coffee Supreme, Justin McArthur.
Not long after this interview, Justin got really sick and ended up in hospital for the best part of a year. I’m actually not sure where Justin is at now - he’s a legend, I hope he’s okay.
The Panama Hartmann Geisha
I’ve been drinking coffee for near on three years now (I was a late comer to the black stuff) after being introduced to it via the biggest coffee I have ever seen. It was from Starbucks in NYC. I was with my best man while my wife slept. It had so much whipped cream it might as well of been a ice cream sundae. It was gross but great and exactly what I needed after only three hours sleep.
When I got back to Kiwi land I was straight into short blacks and flat whites. But now look at me - smashing back chemex’s, v60s, single origins and cold drip. And now the Panama Hartmann Geisha.
The geisha is a a great tasting, low yielding coffee that grows only in very specific conditions. As a result, it’s very, very expensive.
This year’s coffee, which was roasted by Coffee Supreme in Wellington, retailed for $160/kg. Not cheap well worth the price of admission. Well to find out what the pros reckon,I went down to the Coffee Supreme roaster in Hopper Street, Wellington, to have a chat with Justin McArthur, Roasting Manager and P{oof rEader (sic).
TMR: So, the Geisha, it rocks. A big seller for you guys?
Justin: “Yeah, it all goes. We’ve been a little more bullish this year with the geisha purchasing. In the last couple of years we have had just the one geisha season. Each year we buy a little bit more and it all goes. So this year we bought two different geishas. We have another Panamanian geisha which will be our big Christmas coffee later this year.”
TMR: It’s a pretty expensive coffee at $160/kg...
Justin: “Yeah but we don’t buy it to make money. They cost so much green there is only so much we can put on it and still make it affordable. So we just really aim to break even on the high end stuff like this.”
Think of that for a second. The best coffee in the world. Crazy rare, crazy good, and their aim is to just break even? How often do you find that? I’ll tell ya - HARDLY EVER!
TMR: So is it always going to be crazy expensive?
Justin: “Everyone has been planting geisha like mad. We should see a softening in the prices in the years ahead. Just simple supply/demand.”
Win. Still probably not a huge drop, but the industry is getting amongst it. That is just great for people like you and me trying to get the best coffee in the world, in the ass end of the south pacific.
TMR: Do you get to try the coffee before you buy or do you blindly buy coffee based on its reputation alone?
Justin: “No, we dont buy any coffee without tasting it first. You can go and cup it at origin, which generally works out to your advantage because you get the chance to buy coffee there and then and secure your supply… You do run the risk of tasting really fresh coffee when you are there though. The harvest this year across Central America was a bit later than usual so when were there in Feb the coffee was quite fresh. You kind of have to look past the freshness in the cup to see what it will really taste like once you get your hands on it. When its fresh its still quite tight and closed, and with another month rest it really opens up and becomes more expressive."
TMR: So is that much of a gamble? Tasting coffee that fresh?
Justin: “You can pretty much expect that it’s only going to improve. We cupped it there and registered our interest, but before it is shipped they send you pre-shipment samples to make sure it is the coffee that you’re after. It is always a risk because we are a long way from where the coffee is grown, and anything can happen, but we try to manage that, and I guess its a pretty limited risk. This year we had the geisha flown over so we could get our hands on it as soon as it was ready.”
TMR: So when you get the real high end coffee, like the geisha, does the roasting add a lot to it, or do you try and just bring out the notes a little and let the coffee speak for itself? How much is the roaster adding to the value of the coffee?
Justin: “Yeah, well, we kind of completely unlock it, as its undrinkable before its roasted obviously. With our retail coffee or anything we roast for filter, our role as a roaster is to be quite transparent. We try not to have our fingerprints all over the coffee. That means we try to give the customer the cleanest, purest expression of what that coffee is rather than putting our spin on it. And that has been trickling through to our wholesale espresso blends over the last few years.”
So big thanks to Justin for his time and taking me around the roastery! He rocks and so does Coffee Supreme.