Perstare -
The Esmeralda Special auction process has left quite a few people scratching their heads. I wrote a response to a similar question on Coffee Geek and thought it might help to repost it here. Peter has already said most of this (much more concise too), but I thought it couldn't hurt to post it anyway.
Hopefully I can shed a little light on this conundrum. One of the aspects of the specialty coffee industry that I love is that so many people are never satisfied with the status quo. There is always a push to improve the quality of the coffee, the fairness and transparency of the process, and to educate everyone involved in the process. Occasionally, this push to improve can leave some people scratching their heads. The Petersons, the owners of Hacienda La Esmeralda, are very much a part of this push to improve the industry. Their decision to hold the auction in the way that they did is a great example of this push.
The Petersons divided their Geisha variety coffee harvest into 10 different batches, based upon the coffee's location/elevation on the farm, type (ie: Peaberry), and date of harvest. They sent off samples of these batches to various roasters that were interested in participating in the auction. In previous auctions the "North of the Creek" harvested coffee has received the highest cupping scores. To our knowledge, this area is also the highest point at which the Petersons have Geisha planted. The batches that received the highest price were from this area; this result is consistent with previous auctions. We agreed the "North of the Creek" harvested coffee (batches 1- 3) cupped ever-so-slightly better than the lots
we purchased (a mixture of North of the Creek and South of the Creek) at the time of cupping. But we also knew those lots would sell for more than we could justify for our customers because they were listed as #1, #2 and #3 in the auction. In our cupping we found the lots we purchased to be within 1-2 points of the highest priced coffee in the auction. The value judgments we make when purchasing any coffee is not simply based on price, name or even quality, but rather a combination of quality and price. In 2007 we made a similar purchase and it was scored as a 97 by Coffeereveiw.com. If anyone would like to see the results from the auction that list where each batch is from on the farm and the harvest dates, here is the link:
Stoneworks AuctionYou can see the progression of the prices in the auction if you click on the little graphs. You can tell that there was a decently big bidding war going on for these top lots. As in any auction, such bidding wars can have a huge impact on the end price. We bought coffee from batches six and ten, two of our favorites from the samples that we received. Now, the roasters who bought the high priced lots are great roasters and cuppers and may have different opinions. Hopefully this explanation clears things up a little and doesn't just muddy up the waters even more.
