IT'S time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Q: In the company of a kimono-wearing Japanese hostess?

A: This geisha has nothing to do with the professional women who entertain men.

Q: What is it, then?

A: A bean behind the surge in popularity of the speciality coffee market.

It set a world record price of Dollars21 per lb ([pounds]11.50) at an internet auction when the commodity price was only 73 cents (40p) per lb.

Q: Where does it grow?

A: Around the town of Boquete in Panama. It was brought there from Costa Rica 40 years ago.

At first, the yield was thought too low to be profitable but that changed.

Q: Why?

A: A global market for expensive quality coffee emerged as consumer tastes became more sophisticated. Coffee quality had deteriorated as a glut in generic beans caused growers to spend less on crop care.

Cuppers say the geisha bean can satisfy the coffee aficionado's quest for the perfect mug.

Q: Cuppers?

A: Tasters who assess toprange coffees for quality.

Doug Welsh, an American cupper, describes the geisha as f loral with a jasmine-like fragrance and an explosive impact on the palate. A growing number of Panama's planters are pinning their hopes on the geisha's popularity.

Q: Were the bean's roots in Costa Rica?

A: It's thought to have come originally from Ethiopia, the home of coffee. Wild coffee plants, probably from Kefa (or Kaffa) in Ethiopia were first taken to southern Arabia for cultivation in the fifteenth century.

According to legend, Kaldi, an Arab goatherd, decided to sample the evergreen bush on which his herd feasted around 850 AD. He, too, experienced a sense of exhilaration. Coffee consumption was born.