One of the pieces of news that circulated in the newspapers last week was that coffee taster Gennaro Pelliccia, who samples products for Costa Coffee, has had his tongue insured for £10m with Lloyd’s. 

The Lloyd’s market has a particular interest in how Costa’s coffee tastes as the Lloyd’s cafeteria serves Costa Coffee.  And guest what, Lloyd’s started out as a coffee shop 321 years ago.

The underwriter who felt that Gennaro’s tongue is effectively worth £10 million must be loving the stuff they serve us in Lloyd’s.  He clearly feels that without Gennaro’s supertaster skills on offer, he’d have to burden himself with inferior flavoured coffee.

Unfortunately, whether the coffee tastes better or not, yours truly could barely care less as I don’t like it.
What I’d like to know is why Gennaro’s tongue is deemed to be worth so much more than mine?

After some research, it appears that Gennaro is a supertaster.

According to Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge that it is, a supertaster has a sense of taste that’s significantly sharper than average.

Wikipedia goes on to say that the evolutionary advantage to supertasting is unclear.  I disagree.  It seems pretty clear to me; if you’re a supertaster, you get paid to sit around tasting stuff. 

This sort of weird insurance policy is not unusual for Lloyd’s. In fact this kind of thing goes on the whole time here, with people taking advantage of the unique and specialist coverage that the Lloyd’s market can offer, for risks that most insurers wouldn’t even consider.

For more, read The Telegraph’s article about 10 of some of the weirdest policies written at Lloyd’s.