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Panama's slender geishas are lofty and elusive. They rest in the shade of guava trees, flourishing in the cool western highlands. One expert was enchanted: "I saw God when I tried these geishas," said Dom Holly.
These geishas are no attentive hostesses in kimonos. They are a rare variety of coffee bean that sold last week at a record-breaking $50.25 per pound - 50 times what standard beans cost on global markets.
Like dozens in the industry Dom Holly, of US roaster Green Mountain Coffee, travels the world in search of the finest beans. Holly is a "cupper" who at tastings sips, slurps, swills and then spits the brews out once they relinquish their secrets.
Cuppers train for years and make the fruitiest of wine buffs look positively restrained. "I'm getting persimmon, a flash of battery acid,
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As a coffee bean breaks price records, mike power meets the connoisseur ‘cuppers’
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ripe mango and then a riot of blueberries on the finish," said one at an event in Panama last week.
These men and women lit the fuse that brought the coffee boom to global high streets, and saved dozens of farmers from bankruptcy. Coffee is now the world's most-traded commodity after oil, but a massive glut of Vietnamese and Brazilian beans in the mid-90s led to a price slump.
Many farmers in Latin America went for the gourmet market, producing shade-grown single-estate arabicas that are increasingly sold and marketed like fine wines.
British caffeine fiends are unlikely ever to meet the geishas. They will be sold in top-end coffee chains in the US and Japan for around $12 a cup. 
FIRST POSTED JUNE 8, 2006
The First Post guide to food and drink
Cocaine galore for Panamanian indians
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