Paradise Roasters purchased an amazing micro-lot coffee — last year’s entire crop was less than 1000 pounds — from Reynel Perez, a small-holder coffee farmer in Planadas, way up in the mountains of Tolima in southern Colombia. The entire lot — save for just five pounds — sold out within weeks after earning a whopping 96 points on Coffee Review –

Exhilaratingly intense but roundly sweet-toned aroma: black cherry, flowers, milk chocolate, with an underlying cedar-toned crispness. Sweet flowers and cherry dominate in the cup with an almost symphonic richness of tone. Medium bodied but silky mouthfeel. The floral notes linger into the farthest reaches of the finish.

I believe that’s the highest mark — and certainly the loftiest prose — I’ve ever seen in Ken’s reviews. I really want to taste this coffee.

Here’s the deal:

That five pound reserve of the Colombia Tolima – Reynel Perez is now being offered in a Dutch auction on eBay, with 100% of the proceeds going direct to Coffee Kids. I’m a huge fan of Coffee Kids. They’re easily the hardest working, biggest hearted non-profit organization I know. Founder Bill Fishbein and his team work tirelessly to improve the lives of children and families in coffee-growing communities the world over. And I’d love to win some of this coffee and help Coffee Kids at the same time.

What I want *you* to do is make me work for it. I’m not asking you to shill up this auction, but to pump it up with real bids that will put more dollars toward the efforts of Coffee Kids. In the best of all worlds, you win, I win, and Coffee Kids wins, too. And if you manage to contribute toward a bidding frenzy that knocks me out of my winning position, than I’ll have the warm comfort of knowing that Bill’s organization came out the better for it, and the bittersweet taste of knowing that somebody else is drinking my coffee!

So, outbid me! I double dog dare you.

P.S. Just to make sure you know I’m walkin’ the talk… if I don’t win I’ll make a direct contribution to Coffee Kids equal to my top bid.

Nuanced, balanced and complex with a lip-smacking semi-sweet finish.

Peet’s current Special Offering — a limited run of a Colombian Caracol (peaberry, en Español) — is an heirloom bean (typica, a very low yield, high quality varietal) from the Huila region of Colombia, and it’s a lovely cup, indeed.

Its deep chocolate and flowers fragrance gives way to chocolate, smoke and leather with a subtle grapefruit acid zing. It’s body is liquid velvet — so smooth, so luxurious — and the slightly impatient, astringent nip in its musky-sweet finish just leaves you wanting more.

In a press this is Sappho in a cup; its poetry is only slightly muted with a manual drip method. (We won’t tell Mr. coffee, okay?)

Highly recommended. Get it while you can. (Maybe dab some behind your ears on Friday night and get lucky.)

I’ve recently written about my new-found appreciation for Colombian coffee — a growing region I’d long written off as an example of style over substance; marketing over matter. The past few weeks I’ve had not only opportunity to eat most of my prior sour words, but also the sweet pleasure of some fine Colombian coffees with which to wash them down. And this one… well, it’s the sweetest yet.

Andrew Barnett’s Ecco Caffe is a boutique coffee roaster in Santa Rosa, California. I don’t know if he’d care for that description — boutique – but it fits. Andrew’s got an exceptional palate; more, he’s got damn fine culinary instincts and a rep as one of coffee’s nicest guys. (Let’s see him dodge that one!)

But this isn’t about Andrew, really, it’s about Olga Laura and her family coffee estate, La Virginia. La Virginia, in the Huila region of Colombia, has the great good fortune of volcanic soils, fresh spring water for washing and fermenting its coffee, and sunshine enough to patio-dry. This triple threat offers the potential for great coffee… that, and meticulous management makes the coffee of La Virginia a grand cru, one which handily bested every coffee save one for top price in this years Colombia First Harvest Cup of Excellence.

Andrew’s take on roasting is hugely respectful of the coffee; this one’s just this side of Full City — no evidence at all of 2nd pop or surface oils — and ideally suited to this bean. Ground, the coffee effuses chocolate candy sweetness, enveloped by orange blossoms and ripe summer fruit, virtually none of which is dimished as it brews. In the cup its acidity dances gracefully in counterpoint with a golden, honeyed sweetness, subtle cocoa undertones and an astoundingly rich and creamy body. As the cup cools its honey tones give way to flavors of sun-kissed summer grapes, still warm from the vine… at once sweet, tart and juicy.

Available now at Ecco Caffe… and I wager it won’t be available for very long.

Also on the tasting table… another Ecco Caffe selection, two more from Coffee Emergency, a trio of offerings from Jeff Taylor at PT’s Coffee, some curious but curiously apropos blends from Boca Java, and a taste of Peet’s Panama Esmeralda Reserve.

Finally, Barry Jarrett at Riley’s Coffee reprises his role as quiz master a la The Mystery Cup Challenge, and has sent me two coffees simply labeled “A” and “B”. Can’t wait to tear into those…

I’ll admit some prejudice — not altogether unwarranted — against Colombian coffee. Let’s face it, we’ve *all* been told for years now how Colombian coffee is mountain-grown; that only the ripest beans are picked by Juan Valdez (and his faithful little burro). And even while the Colombian Coffee Federation was feeding us this hugely successful marketing campaign they were rounding up beans from all over and carting them to vast processing mills and creating a single, homogeneous flavor profile. And we consumers were most all of us buying our 100% Colombian coffee — the best coffee in the world, mind you — pre-ground in its little red vacuum-packed can and we were satisfied, perhaps… if a little underwhelmed.

The campaign helped to create a market for single-origin coffee… still it failed to deliver on its promise. Today, Colombian coffee growers have some ground to cover — the very gap that their Federation created between our expectations of Colombian coffee, and our experience. And so, even while the latest incarnation of Juan Valdez smiles his mustachioed smile at us — Colombian coffee farmers are racing to discover the true flavors and identity of their beans, their growing regions and micro-climates. In Colombia, as elsewhere, the Cup of Excellence competition is proving a particularly effective vehicle for discovery.

When you cup the field of winners of the Colombian First Harvest Cup of Excellence and your gut reaction is — okay… so what else ya got? — you just might be a coffee snob.

Colombian coffees — even specialty-grade coffees — are rarely knock-your-socks-off kind of beans. The character of Colombian coffee is often described as “classic”… medium bodied, gently acidic, and mildly fruited. For a coffee snob, those descriptors can spell a code word that doesn’t require Dan Brown to cypher out: m-e-d-i-o-c-r-i-t-y. And to be perfectly candid, there were cups in this year’s field of jury-selected winners that struck me as altogether… mild. Soft flavors, acidity that offered monotoned, mostly-lemon brightness in a cup that, at this level, should offer technicolor.

Make no mistake, this year’s Colombian C.O.E. program offered some exceptional beans, with flavor profiles that ranged far and wide — beans you might mistake for a huge and winey Kenya, or a dusky chocolate Nicaraguan — and with an intensity of flavor and nuanced complexity that such a competition demands. The most remarkable cup of all, however — the cup I bid on at auction, and which Green Mountain now offers as its third Special Reserve selection — is one we very nearly disqualified.

A single bad bean — one that is under-ripe or overripe, one that’s been fermented too long or otherwise mishandled in processing — can ruin an entire pot of coffee. In cupping the Colombian C.O.E. we had five cups of each lot of coffee on the table… and one of the five samples cups for this lot had a flaw. A serious flaw. You could smell it. You could taste it. It was unmistakable, and perhaps unforgivable in competition… except that the four other cups from that particular farm were arguably the most exciting of all the coffees on the table.

In the end — after another round of cupping that proved entirely without flaws — it was learning more about the farmer of this coffee that won us over. Don Alonso Sevilla Zúñiga has grown coffee for more than 60 years. He treats his coffee with respect and patience, and manages his land carefully. So was it something of a risk to put this particular coffee — a coffee that may prove to be a little edgy – on our Special Reserve list? Absolutely. But the rewards immediately reveal themselves in the cup.

Green Mountain’s Special Reserve Colombian — named after Don Alonso’s farm in Pitalito, Dos Quebradas — is an exceptional, and exceptionally balanced coffee. It’s a lovely chestnut-hued bean, roasted just on the full side of City. Just ground it’s intensely fragrant of coffee flower, orange blossoms and sweet cedar, and while it brews it offers grace notes of caramel and green apple. Its body is round, its acidity is crisp and snappy — assured but not overpowering — while its flavors are a rich and complex compote of summer fruits; melon and pear while the cup is very warm, peach and apricot as it cools. Its finish is just as dynamic, as its lingering acidity fairly dances on the tongue.

Kudos to the coffee team at Green Mountain — Lindsey, Patty, Deb, Shannon and Ed — for taking a chance on this remarkable bean… and for sparking my own renewed respect and appreciation for “classic” Colombian coffee.

Imus Ranch Coffee… claims to be “100% Colombian Coffee”. I don’t see anything on the Imus Ranch package to suggest it’s 100% Arabica coffee, and given its wet cardboard aroma and burnt rubber and ash flavors, I wouldn’t doubt there’s significant Robusta content. Icky, unpleasant and a general assault on the senses.

Not recommended, even for lawyers you intend to later spray with bird-shot.

Hawaiian Gold Fancy Kona Coffee Gourmet Blend… a stellar example of why Kona coffee shouldn’t be blended. Virtually no aroma, and only the most subtle of brightness (yeah, I’m reaching here.) Gold Coffee here offers a mild and mellow flavor (probably Colombian) with a rounded body and a decent, if short finish. Nothing whatsoever about its flavor says anything about Kona coffee, and whomever grows this should be apoplectic and shame-faced about the final result.

Not recommended. Remember, kids… just say no to Kona blends.

Equal Exchange Cafe Salvador… actually, not bad. Not bad at all. A slightly nutty and floral aroma with bitter orange / bergamot brightness and predominantly chocolate flavors, this offering from Equal Exchange is round and slightly roasty, and generally quite slurp-able.

Recommended… and a fine intro to an increasingly impressive array of coffees from El Salvador.

When icons do battle, it’s epic stuff… Godzilla and Mothra. Kirk and Kahn. IBM and Apple. Juan and the Mermaid?

The Colombian Coffee Federation – that even sounds epic! – fronted by the fictional Juan Valdez, is preparing for battle with the Siren of Seattle. The Seattle Times calls it thisaway:

Long before Starbucks hit the mainstream, Valdez was the face of coffee to many Americans, leading his mule through coffee fields and grocery-store aisles on TV ads sponsored by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia.

Now, the federation is looking to parlay Valdez’s familiar image into a global chain of high-end coffee shops. Ten Juan Valdez stores are up and running in Colombia, and federation chief Gabriel Silva told Reuters this week that the chain will open at least eight U.S. stores later this year.

It’s a bold move for the Colombian group… and the logic is eminently clear: why settle for pennies per pound for green coffee beans when the beverage business gets dollars per cup?

The upside is huge, but so’s the risk. Does Juan still carry the iconic power he held while Mrs. Olson was hawking Folgers, and Mr. Coffee was the state-of-the-art of brewing tech? Can any coffee house stand on the one leg of a single origin, ‘specially one that’s the very definition of mild, unassuming coffee? We’ll see soon enough.

Bonus question: What was Juan’s mule’s name? [Look in the comments, below, for the answer!]