If you were to stop in at one of the many excellent coffee shops in Cape Town and ask a coffee-lover for their favorite bean, chances are they'll wax lyrical about the nuances of Coffea arabica, the world's most popular premium bean. Some might swear by Robusta, but it's more commonly used in mass-market brands and instant coffee. If they're a true coffee geek, they might know about Coffea liberica or Coffea excelsea, found in small pockets of West Africa and Asia. In fact, around 130 species of Coffea are found worldwide.
And now, one of the world's rarest varieties of coffee beans is being roasted to perfection right here in Cape Town.
Coffea racemosa has been dubbed the 'world's rarest coffee bean', and with good reason. For starters, it only grows in a small sliver of coastline in Mozambique and northern Kwazulu-Natal. While the bean was once cultivated by the Portuguese during the colonial period of Mozambique, for decades plantations were left to wither and the tree grew only in the wild coastal sand forests along southern Mozambique and northern KwaZulu-Natal.
That is beginning to change as a handful of dedicated farmers invest in small-scale cultivation of this remarkable member of the coffee family tree. But even when the tree is in full production, it yields a fraction of a fully-grown Arabica tree. Some growers suggest you need six Racemosa trees to match the yield of a single Arabica!
It's perhaps no surprise that Cape coffee pioneer David Donde is involved in this groundbreaking project, buying raw beans from KwaZulu-Natal coffee farmer and broker Charles Dennison and roasting them to perfection at his world-famous Truth Coffee Roasting.
"The bean itself is tiny – a third of the size of Arabica – and it's naturally low in caffeine," says Donde, who raves about the bean's herbal flavour notes: "Marijuana. Rosemary. Thyme."
Because of the bean's small size – and rarity – enormous care is taken during the small-batch roasting in 'The Colossus'; Truth's iconic 1947 Probat coffee roaster.
"You can't grill flavour into a steak, and the same goes for coffee," says Donde. "I can't roast flavour into a bean, but I can optimize for getting the most flavour out of the bean. And with Racemosa, it develops in flavour as it ages, so you'd rather have a one-month-old bean than one roasted yesterday."
If you can afford it, that is. Truth's precious allocation of Racemosa beans is only roasted on request and sold in 80g packages. Only 55 units are available for sale.
And the cost? Those 80 precious grams will set you back a cool R1499. Or R18.70 per gram. Brew it carefully and sip it slowly. Feeling flush? You can buy it online over here.
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