At first glance, a $100 cup of coffee might seem like a lot—and admittedly by the roasters own words it is—but for local coffee company Phil and Sebastian it represents so much more than just the average cup of joe.

This month, owing to an absolutely limited worldwide supply, Sebastian Sztabzyb co-founder of Phil and Sebastian will be leading a few Calgarians on one of the most exclusive tastings of coffee on the planet.

What those lucky few will get to try is the world’s second most expensive coffee from Finca Sophia, bid on at the Best of Panama auction held in August of 2024 as the result of the highly exclusive Best of Panama Competition.

That coffee received over 1,300 bids for just 20 kilograms and ultimately fetched $70,020 USD (or over $100,000 CDN) in that auction.

Phil and Sebastian’s received just a single kilogram from the lot. When you calculate the costs to cover that $5,000 per kilo, along with the specialty equipment and custom-made ceramic tasting cups to maximize the flavour, that $100 per cup cost barely covers the cost to serve.

“This is not a money-making exercise. It’s a thought exercise. It’s a market-challenging exercise. It’s a market investigation exercise if anything,” said Sztabzyb.

“We’re talking about the ultra-luxury coffee market, which in Canada, sadly, doesn’t really exist. In other parts of the world, it’s alive and well, and places in Asia have had it for a long time.”

That was borne out of the Best of Panama auction, which saw the top-priced coffee in the entire competition from the natural geisha category fetch $200,260, with the bidders mostly from China, Japan, and Korea. In the washed geisha category, which the Finca Sophia coffee hails from, that lot of 20 kg sold for more than $14,370 per kilo.

If Calgarians don’t know the difference between washed and natural geisha varieties of coffee, then the tasting is entirely the point, said Sztabzyb

The difference comes from how the fruit, which looks a little bit like a cranberry that surrounds the coffee bean, is processed. In a natural process, the fruit is allowed to dry and loosen from the bean, but imparts flavours as the fruit ferments and sugars surround the bean.

“That drying could take anywhere from two weeks to six weeks, and different conditions of climate, heat, humidity, and all these somewhat uncontrolled chemical physiological reactions, including fermentation that impart a flavour on the coffee that is not very little to do the terroir,” said Sztabzyb.

“Those tend to be really wild coffees that are very expressive but don’t necessarily represent that varieties.”

In a washed process, the fruit is washed off, keeping the original flavour of the bean itself.

Sztabzyb said that both processes are used by coffee producers to create great coffees, with a wide variety of different flavour profiles.

For beverages like wine and whisky, the natural terroir processing methodology is through the use of oak barrels and aging, and the way they are served is readily embraced by consumers.

Coffee, however, has been treated more as a commodity product by the Canadian market, he said.

“I’m not saying this in a negative way, we’ve commoditized coffee a little bit more than other countries have. So, as a result, anything that takes it away from being commoditized starts to be a little bit further away from our comfort zone,” said Sztabzyb.

“If you told someone you are going to try $100 Scotch, they might be like ‘oh, that sounds really interesting. I wonder how old that must be. What’s so special about that Scotch? Whereas if you say to someone like, ‘oh, I’m gonna go taste a $100 cup of coffee,’ they’ll be like, ‘what’s going on with the world?'”

Sztabzyb said that 18 years ago he was called crazy to have introduced a $6 cup of coffee to the Calgary market—but now has come to be an accepted price point for coffee that ranges from the more commercial commodity types to more carefully selected and brewed versions.

“Providing an experience that doesn’t take away from the other stuff we do. To me, they’re very separate. There’s something for everybody, and so I don’t look at it as taking away from our $3 coffee that we serve. It’s just something else,” he said.

Coffee on a different level, literally and metaphorically

One of the reasons why the Finca Sophia coffee is so expensive, and so in demand, is that it’s grown in very small quantities in an environment not used for mass coffee production.

Sztabzyb explained that most coffee in Panama is grown at lower elevations at warmer temperatures between about 1,400 metres and 1,900 metres.

“That’s sort of the sweet spot where Panamanian coffee is grown. After that, what you see are cabbage, potatoes, onions, and hearty stuff that grows close to the ground that can take on colder temperatures,” he said.

Finca Sophia is grown above that at 2,140 metres because of a unique situation where the coffee can be protected by a canopy of trees that regulates temperature, and the mountainous location that protects it from the hard storms of both the Pacific and the Atlantic, he said.

The farm itself was founded in 2008 and took nearly a decade to establish, eventually beginning to place in 2016 for numerous food and beverage awards like the Good Food Awards and the Best of Panama.

“When you get a farm of this elevation being able to produce, then you start to see some of the magic. Because what happens is the period from which the tree flowers to the period where it ripens—which is normally long at this farm—that extra period is where all the good stuff gets into that coffee bean,” said Sztabzyb.

“So it’s that extra time that the tree has to throw some more sugars at the bean, throw some more amino acids, that are the sort of some of the key elements that we try to unlock. We roast to try to develop flavour.”

Unlocking that flavour comes from both the process of roasting and from the specialized equipment and filters used to create a cup of coffee.

Sztabzyb used an Orea pour-over brewer, which has a fine mesh filter made in Spain. It allows for water to go through the roasted coffee, without getting stuck. Something in the business of coffee making, called choking, creates an extended contact time between the water and the ground coffee allowing for the extraction of undesirable bitter elements.

The process uses high-end filter papers that bind to the surface of the V60, preventing water from bypassing the brew over process and diluting the flavour, he said.

“I get more extraction, and it’s the good kind of more extraction without the byproducts of over-extraction. So, I find this allows me to push my extraction to maximize flavour but minimize the negative byproduct,” said Sztabzyb.

The cost of those filters was more than 10 times what a regular filter would cost, but are designed for those processes to get the most out of an expensive coffee, he said.

The coffee itself is by Sztabzyb’s own words, nothing like a regular cup of coffee.

The flavours produced are delicate with floral notes and a starting taste of citrus without any hints of bitterness. As the coffee cools, those floral notes, which are fleeting, are replaced with stronger notes of stone fruit like apricots and plums, and notes of lavender in the aroma.

As the coffee cools even more, it takes on new flavours like black tea and different citrus notes, like those of yuzu, along with a light honey sweetness.

“Everybody, they taste it and say ‘oh, that’s interesting. OK, I kind of get it.’ Then they taste it again, and they’re like, ‘oh, what’s happening?’ Then they taste it again, and they go, ‘OK, what? What’s going on with this coffee now?'”

That change in flavour comes as the organic compounds in the coffee that make up flavour are transformed at differing temperature points, and from the roasting itself to begin with.

“Coffee has caffeine, which is bitter. For coffee to have virtually zero bitterness is quite rare. But this coffee is far from drinking normal coffee, bitterness comes along with it [flavours] like chocolate and nuts. These are things you associate with coffee, and sometimes dark spices and molasses, maybe. This coffee is none of them,” said Sztabzyb.

Calgarians looking to try this coffee will find it in limited supply, although a few tastings have been made available.

Starting on Jan. 20, the public will be able to book one of those limited tastings—likely not more than 20 or so.

“We’re going to use it as an opportunity to spread the word, and we’re going to offer a part of it to the public. I’m prepared if people, if everyone, thinks it’s insane and no one wants to try it at the end of the day, that’s OK,” said Sztabzyb.

“It’s an exercise in creating an experience and seeing how interested the Calgary market is for these experiences. I’m pretty optimistic that there’ll be enough people interested, but I don’t know. It might take a couple of cracks at it for people to be, you know, jumping at it.”

But he said that even if people can take away 50 per cent of a tasting, and start to recognize the differences that come from different types of coffee on a much deeper level, he would consider that a win.

“Just the fact that people are willing to identify flavours in coffee where that’s not normal already to begin with, that’s to me is great,” he said.

For more details, and to book a tasting, see philsebastian.com/products/finca-sophia-tasting-experience.