Growing Regions

Key Varieties

The $21 Cup That Rewrote Coffee Economics

In 2002, Daniel Peterson of Hacienda La Esmeralda discovered distinctive trees on the Jaramillo farm his father Price Peterson had acquired years earlier. These tall, long-internode plants with copper-coloured leaf tips stood out from the surrounding Catuaí and Typica trees — Price had noticed their unusual morphology years before but not pursued it. Daniel submitted a sample of this variety separately to the Best of Panama competition in 2004, labelling it "Geisha" (the spelling later changed to "Gesha" to reflect its Ethiopian origin more accurately).

The judges' response was immediate and unanimous: this coffee was unlike anything they had tasted before. Jasmine, bergamot, lemongrass, tea-like clarity, extraordinary aromatic intensity at levels that no Central American coffee had achieved commercially. Hacienda La Esmeralda won the competition. The lot was offered at auction. It sold for $21 per pound — ten times the specialty market rate at the time. The coffee world changed.

Within years, Gesha trees were being sourced from Ethiopia (where the variety originated in the Gesha forest of southwestern Ethiopia), distributed to farms in Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. Panama's Gesha had demonstrated that a single variety, in the right conditions, could command prices previously unimaginable in coffee — triggering a global variety renaissance. By 2024, Hacienda La Esmeralda's annual Best of Panama auction lots were selling for over $1,300 per pound. Total production from La Esmeralda's Gesha plots is a few hundred bags per year — which is why the price per pound is what it is.

Why Gesha Tastes the Way It Does

Gesha's distinctive cup character is genetic — the variety's intrinsic aromatic profile, shaped by thousands of years of adaptation in Ethiopia's Kaffa and Gesha forests, produces the jasmine, bergamot, and lemongrass florality that has made it the world's most sought-after coffee variety. The variety was originally collected by researchers at the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica in the 1930s as part of a disease-resistance research programme, then largely forgotten in a CATIE seed bank for decades until the Peterson family received seeds in the 1960s and eventually planted them on the Jaramillo farm.

Terroir amplifies the genetic character: Boquete's volcanic soils, the cool Fria winds from the Pacific that moderate highland temperatures, and the specific microclimate of the Jaramillo sector allow Gesha's characteristics to express with a clarity and intensity that the variety does not always achieve in other producing countries. Panamanian Gesha commands price premiums even over Gesha from Colombia or Costa Rica because this specific terroir-variety interaction produces something singular.

The Best of Panama Competition

The Best of Panama (BoP) competition — organised annually by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama — has become one of the most-watched events in specialty coffee since the 2004 breakthrough. Each year, Panama's top producers submit lots for blind cupping evaluation; top-scoring lots sell through international online auction to buyers across the global specialty trade. The competition produces world records for coffee price on a regular basis: 2019 lots sold for $1,029 per pound; 2024 lots exceeded $1,300 per pound.

Beyond La Esmeralda, Panama's specialty scene has developed multiple world-class operations. Finca Deborah — Jamison Savage's extreme-altitude Gesha farm in Boquete, planted above 1,700 metres — produces tiny quantities of exceptionally complex Gesha that competition buyers pursue aggressively. Carmen Estate, Elida Estate, and Lerida Coffee have all achieved significant BoP results. The competition provides a quality credentialing system that allows buyers to identify reliable sources of genuine Panamanian Gesha quality in an increasingly imitated market.

Finca Deborah: Extreme Altitude, Extreme Rarity

Jamison Savage's Finca Deborah — perched above 1,700 metres in the Boquete highlands — represents the outer edge of what Panamanian Gesha can achieve at extreme altitude. Savage, who was a journalist before becoming a coffee farmer, turned his farm into one of specialty coffee's most analysed and discussed micro-operations. Production is tiny — sometimes fewer than 20 bags per harvest — and the waiting list for buyers to access a single bag is measured in years. The cups produced have been described by specialty buyers as the most intensely floral Gesha commercially available anywhere in the world.

Key Producers & Exporters