World’s most expensive coffee – Gesha | Panama’s fantasy bean
Specialty coffee is a funny business. Rare, highly sought after and often sold at a premium price tag, Gesha bean is the crown jewel when it comes to the world of coffee. This very bean catapulted Panama into the top coffee destinations in the world. A lazy misspelling – or perhaps an attempt to capture mainstream attention, turned this celebrated variety into “Geisha” – something which I couldn’t help cringe at as I visited multiple fincas in the central Panamian highlands near Boquete.
Contentious origin
Until recently, Gesha wasn’t all that well known. It is originally believed to have been discovered in the 1930s in Gesha, in the south-western part of Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a fascinating history of coffee. Kaffa, another province in the south-western highlands of Ethiopia, gave its name to the word coffee itself, and its variants in so many other languages. But that’s a topic for another post.
Gesha’s claim to fame
Gesha shot to fame in 2004 when it won the Best of Panama coffee competition, and since then it has maintained the status as one of the best cupping profiles. And also as world’s most expensive coffee. How this variety with distinctly Ethiopian lineage made it to Central America isn’t well understood, but it is now grown across Costa Rica, Panama as well as Colombia. Although it has seen a regular presence at the coffee championships, Gesha never went mainstream since they taste the best as filter brews rather than as lattes and cappuccinos. The favor profile is strikingly floral with berries, honey, bergamot orange being some of the common undertones.
Today, tourism around Gesha coffee is big business. But it all started with a serendipitous moment.
As Price Peterson, the farm’s owner, describes in this interview, “Finca Esmeralda bought the Jaramillo farm in 1997, mostly for the quality of coffee and its altitude. In January, 2004 we began cupping coffees from various parts of the farm testing the notion that rather than a general good cup, there might be an area with an intensely fine cup which was flavoring all the output of the farm when it was all mixed together. It turned out he was right. At the upper extreme of the farm there was a very small valley which had the cup you know as Jaramillo Special and this was providing much of the flavor for the rest. When he separated out this upper coffee (about 3% of the total), that part was special… the remainder, very good, but not with the intense cup you know”
Head to Boquete for some tasting
Although it started being grown by Finca Esmeralda on their Jaramillo farm in the Boquete region, lot of other fincas have since started growing and selling the Gesha varietal. Esmeralda does a private auction every year, and a pound can fetch thousands of dollars! If you are in the Boquete area in Panama, I highly recommend going on a tasting tour and deciding for yourself if the price tag is worth the perfect cuppa.
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