Proud Mary Café To Sell Award-Winning Coffee For $150 Per Cup
If you thought $8 for your daily oat milk latte was steep, buckle your seatbelt. Starting Monday, February 6, Proud Mary café will be selling coffee at $150 per cup. Proud Mary is based in Australia but also has locations in Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas (via KXAN). Coffee fans who live in either of those cities: Get excited or, perhaps, a little skeptical. Either way, this $150 eight-ounce cup of joe doesn't come from just any coffee brand – it's brewed from the most premium beans in the world.
Per Oregon Live, the beans are a Black Jaguar Geisha coffee produced by the Panama-based Hartmann Estate. Proud Mary's website details that Black Jaguar Geisha features notes of jasmine, strawberry, blackberry, and passionfruit — and just one pound of the stuff costs Proud Mary a whopping $2,000. (That's $250 per ounce.)
Matt Lounsbury, the senior vice president of Proud Mary, claims, "It's currently the highest accoladed coffee in the world." So, what exactly makes coffee like Black Jaguar Geisha so special and worth the hefty price tag?
Black Jaguar Geisha coffee is made from high-quality beans from Panama
After breaking into the coffee scene during the early 2000s, Panama has become globally recognized for creating some of the best quality coffee in the world, reports Perfect Daily Grind. According to Unido Panama Coffee Roasters, the Isthmus of Panama is a narrow piece of land with optimal climate conditions for coffee cultivation. Ideal altitude, rich volcanic soil, sunny days, cool evenings, and Pacific and Atlantic ocean current winds make Panama uniquely perfect for bean agriculture.
The Hartmann family has grown top-tier coffee for two generations since settling in Panama in 1912. The $150 coffee comes from a winning lot produced by the Hartmanns from the Best of Panama coffee competition — a contest run by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP) to showcase the high-quality, small-batch product of local Panamanian coffee farmers. Now, Proud Mary café will serve it up for a limited time.
KXAN reveals that only 22 cups of the elite fare will be sold in the U.S. — 11 cups in Austin and 11 cups in Portland. There is, however, one exception: Golden Ticket winners get a cup for free. To enter, coffee fans need to order a presale tin of the limited-run Finca Hartmann's Geisha coffee. Presale orders must be placed by Thursday to qualify, per Oregon Live. The thrill of the chase is free, and the tin only runs $34 for 100 grams.