When the auction began on the afternoon of May 29, six cartels had set their sights on 500 pounds of an almost mythical Panamanian product. For eight hours, they bid and counterbid online, with one determined group lodging a total of 27 separate offers—all in vain. After a frenzied tit-for-tat between the final two contenders, the price for the juggernaut known as La Esmeralda Special steamrolled past the record set the year before, fetching an astonishing $130 per pound. The winning bid was more than 11 times the price of the auction’s next-highest-earning coffee bean.

Yes, coffee beans.

Anything described as “explosively floral on the palate” by the Specialty Coffee Association of America might be expected to attract a certain amount of attention, especially after being named the world’s best coffee by the association for three years running. A judge from Kansas City scored it a perfect 100 in this year’s Best of Panama competition. A Seattle coffee executive blogged that “its aroma practically sings to you from between endless rows of other exemplary coffees.” A New York barista dubbed it the “undisputed heavyweight champion of coffee.”

La Esmeralda Special is all the more remarkable given that, a decade ago, the spindly trees that produced the beans were little more than windbreaks owned by the family of a prominent American banker. But while the hefty price may be a curiosity, Esmeralda’s popularity signals a broader shift in an industry where quantity, not quality, has long reigned supreme. In a post-Starbucks world, specialty coffee has become a hot commodity, and La Esmeralda Special is far from alone in the upper echelons.

“I think we’re seeing a fundamental shift in the coffee industry in terms of making coffee much more of a personal and exciting beverage than it ever has been,” says Susie Spindler, executive director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, an organization in Missoula, Montana, that runs the Cup of Excellence competitions and online auctions in eight countries.

The most recent rush of excitement has been over a roasted bean variety called Geisha. Originally from Ethiopia, the relatively low-yielding but disease-resistant Geisha trees were transplanted to Central America in the 1950s. They were soon yanked from coffee farms, however, as the market shifted to mass production in response to exploding demand.

In 1964, Swedish-born Rudolph Peterson, then chief executive of Bank of America, bought Hacienda La Esmeralda, a dairy and beef farm in Panama’s Chiriqui highlands. The property was eventually passed on to his son Price, who in 1996 expanded the family’s holdings, buying a nearby farm with a “mish-mash” of coffee trees on its upper reaches, according to Price’s son Daniel. Almost immediately, the family could smell and taste something special in the cups of coffee produced from the farm’s beans.