It is rare that a coffee moves me to tears.

It was a stressful process to get this coffee to us. First it was lost, then found, then we heard that one of the vacuum-sealed bags had broken. It was a relief to finally see our coffee on April 6; it was sealed fresh from harvest in October. Honestly, I was getting worried we would never see this amazing coffee that I had told our staff about.

For each coffee we receive, we take a 150 gram sample and put it into our sample roaster to see if it matches our notes from its previous sample. When I cupped it the first time the word I underlined was Yirgacheffe. To me, this coffee has a distinctly Ethiopia Yirgacheffe-like quality, but almost the Yirgacheffe of my dreams (for whatever reason, I have not in years tasted a Yirgacheffe of the quality I am seeking).
When I cupped this coffee as an arrival sample, there it was again: a coffee of such beauty and complexity that I might have dreamt it. Many words can describe it, but tears of joy—and maybe relief—welled up in my eyes.

The back story:

Last October, while on a lunch break from the cupping rounds as a jury member at the 2009 Cup of Excellence in Corioico Bolivia, a handsome young man in maybe his early thirties with amazingly vibrant blue eyes sat down next to me and introduced himself as Mauricio. Mauricio and I talked about Bolivia, politics, land, history, and mining, which lead to agriculture. About a half hour into our conversation I asked what he did and he said he was a coffee farmer. Mauricio has an aura more of diplomat meets adventurer businessman.

Over the week we got to know more of each other and the coffee conversations became more intense and detailed. By the end of the week in Bolivia I felt that whatever Mauricio’s coffees taste like he surely knows his stuff, and truly from seed to cup. Yes, he had hired Paul Songer as a consultant to build a coffee farm of top pedigree, and yep, he flew to the states to see what all this third wave coffee stuff was about. Mauricio is in it to win. Before the week was over I had committed to buy some of his coffee for a price I knew my bosses would have to sit down to hear.

But win he did, the coffee lot he submitted to the Cup of Excellence (CoE) received the highest price for any CoE coffee last year: $35.10 green.

Mauricio Diez De Medina is a name that we who love great coffee will soon know very well.
—Oliver