Pu’er Coffee

  “Once, I was their moonlight — pure and rare. Now, the moon still shines, but no one looks up anymore.” 1. A Name Written in Gold My name is Geisha . Most people think I’m a coffee variety . But the truth is far more complicated — and far more human. In the chronicles of Specialty Coffee , my name is written in bold, shimmering ink across the opening pages. They call me legend , queen , benchmark — a measure of whether a cup of coffee is worthy of the world’s finest tables. At auctions, I’ve set prices that made headlines. My flavor has been called divine : a burst of jasmine, the sweetness of citrus and bergamot, and a tea-like body as smooth as velvet. And yet, tonight, as I gaze up at the stars over a quiet estate in Baoshan, Yunnan, I feel a strange sense of confusion. Is this the same sky that watched over the village of Gesha, Ethiopia, seventy years ago? My name is the same — but I, somehow, am not. 2. The Forest and the Mistake My story began with a beautif...

  “Peaberry” coffee beans (commonly called male beans) are a unique type of coffee bean that develop as a single oval-shaped seed inside the coffee cherry. This usually happens due to unusual pollination, drought, or other environmental factors, causing only one of the two seeds that normally grow in a cherry to fully develop. The lone seed then absorbs all the nutrients, forming a round bean. Unlike the typical flat “regular beans” (sometimes called female beans or flat beans), peaberries have a plump, oval shape. Because they develop individually, round beans usually have a higher density. In terms of flavor, peaberries are often described as having a richer body, brighter acidity, and more concentrated flavors—though this is debated, and not all coffee enthusiasts agree that they taste better than regular beans. Another key feature of peaberries is their rarity: they make up only about 5% to 10% of a coffee harvest. Their scarcity and the need for manual sorting mean that peaber...