Boquete Coffee Geisha Coffee

When I was a child, growing up between the dairy farms of Connecticut and the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I always envisioned myself, one day, as a coffee farmer in the Boquete highlands of Panama in Central America….

Well. Maybe not exactly.

I actually grew up in a family where coffee, Maxwell House, came powdered from a jar. Even with milk and sugar it was nasty. I had no concept that coffee came from an actual plant or that it could actually taste good!

I did not develop an appreciation for coffee until I spent some time in Seattle, Washington when the first Starbucks coffee houses were opening. There I discovered coffees from Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Costa Rica. Viennese, French and Italian roasts. Lattes, cappuccinos and espressos. The exotica of coffee—REAL coffee—filled my senses. The smell. The texture. The color. The taste. I began to order my beans shipped overnight. I stored them in special containers. I ground the beans fresh each morning. I French pressed two perfect cups at a time. I developed my own special blend of roasts, striving for that just-right smooth, full-bodied chocolaty taste that I had come to favor. Not for me the light, bright blends with clean aftertaste touted as ‘sophisticated, jazzy and urbane’. Give me the dark, complex, mysterious brews that conjure images of European street cafes cast in the dreamy lights of an Impressionist painting… Yes. Along with millions of others, I fell victim to The Romance of Coffee. That was over 20 years ago. Now, of course, I eschew Starbucks as mainstream, uber-hyped, consumerist swill.

Upon moving to Boquete and purchasing a small coffee farm, my Romance became a full-blown Affair and then a Marriage, as I began to learn the complexities involved in the world of specialty coffee.

In 2004, coffee from Boquete, Panama had made history in the international world of specialty coffees. A particular strain of Arabica, known commonly as Geisha, grown on Hacienda Esmeralda on Alto Jaramillo, sold for record prices at auction. As a result, Boquete coffee—with the Esmeralda Special leading the way—was beginning to receive the same sorts of attention and accolades that previously had been reserved for Jamaica Blue Mountain and Hawaiian Kona coffees.

The name, Geisha, is a misnomer. All coffee varieties trace their roots back to the highlands of Ethiopia and this particular variety comes from the small mountain town of Gesha, in the southwestern part of the country. The variety was brought to Boquete from Costa Rica in the late 1960s. It grows on quite a few farms in the Boquete area. It takes an expert to truly determine if a plant is a Geisha, but you can look for the typical long narrow fruiting body holding two longer-than-normal beans.

The story of the Esmeralda Special begins in 1998, a particularly bad year for coffee in Boquete. Hurricane Mitch sat over Honduras and caused torrential rains and flooding. The effect here was a long, wet October with heavy clouds and no sunshine—ideal conditions for one of the worst diseases coffee suffers from in this area, the “Ojo de Gallo” (Eye of the Rooster) fungal infection. Ojo de Gallo starts as dime-sized circles with yellowing borders on the leaves of the plants and flourishes in moist conditions. Soon the coffee plant’s internal defense mechanism kicks in and to rid itself of the problem, it drops all its leaves, leaving bare branches. With no leaves to produce energy from the sun, the beans never ripen and harvest is poor, at best. The following year, all the plant’s energy goes to making new leaves instead of more beans, effectively eliminating two years of production. In 1998, some of the farms in the Jaramillo area lost 80% of their plants to Ojo de Gallo. (Note: Boquete suffered exactly the same cycle of too much rain and not enough sun in 2010—with the result that almost 60% of the valley’s coffee was lost).

On the Esmeralda-Jaramillo farm the manager, Daniel Peterson, noticed that amongst the various varieties of coffee, one, known as the “Geisha”, seemed to suffer less from the disease—keeping its leaves and producing a harvest while other varieties next to it fared much worse. They decided to seed this variety in an area of the farm ready for new planting. They knew the yields would be lower—Geisha variety grows taller and wider than most common varieties so there are fewer plants per hectare. They reasoned, however, that the plants’ natural resistance would help pull the farm through the years when fungal infections were at their worst.

Jump forward to 2004. The Geisha varietals had reached maturity and were producing their typical long, slender cherries holding two long coffee beans each. Peterson decided to harvest and cup the Geisha separately from the rest of the farm’s coffee. The results were very promising and he sent a small quantity of it to New York to be entered in the Rain Forest Alliance’s coffee competition. The Boquete Geisha took first place amongst all the Rain Forest Alliance’s certified farms. The coffee was also entered in the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama’s yearly competition and again took first place by an astounding margin. Seven bags (at 100 kilos each) were then sold through an internet auction for the record-breaking price of $21 per pound. At the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual conference in Seattle, the Geisha beat out coffees from all over the world in the cupping pavilion. In 2005, the coffee, now named the Esmeralda Special, again won the award for the best coffee in Panama.

Ric Rhinehart, a professional coffee cupper and owner of Groundwork Coffee Co. summed up the experience of judging the Esmeralda Special as follows: “This cup not only had flavors that matched the aroma in intensity and complexity, but added in a perfectly attenuated acidity, solid body and an overall sweetness that made for what may be the most complete cup of coffee I have ever had the pleasure of tasting.”

But what, really, makes these coffees so special—and so expensive? The Specialty Coffee Association of America defines specialty coffee this way: “Sometimes called ‘gourmet’ or ‘premium’ coffee, specialty coffees are made from exceptional beans grown only in ideal coffee-producing climates. They tend to feature distinctive flavors, which are shaped by the unique characteristics of the soil that produces them.”

Limited availability, combined with great marketing, are the prime factors and you need both, in addition to exceptional beans. Juan Valdez of Colombia has great marketing, but he is not able to sell his generic, mass-produced product for more than about $4 or $5 a pound, tops. There is too much of it and it is not exceptional.

Availability and marketing are obvious. But, what constitutes exceptional? By what objective standards is one coffee pronounced exceptional while another of equally limited availability is denied this sobriquet? Well, really, there aren’t any objective standards. Remember the tasting wheel? There are hundreds of combinations of descriptors for the fragrance and taste of a particular cup of coffee, all subject to the interpretation of a cupper’s nose and tongue. Lemony, vanilla, woodsy, earthy, chocolaty, winey…right on around to such unappealing descriptors as cabbagy, wet doggy and skunky.

A friend sent me a Reuters article off Yahoo entitled: Pricey Coffee Good to the Last Dropping. Kopi Luwak, grown on three of the 13,000+ islands in the Indonesian archipelago, may be the ultimate in ‘specialty’ coffees. Last year, only 500 pounds were put on the market. So that’s two out of three: limited availability and high profile marketing. But, what about exceptional? It obviously must be exceptional, as you will pay up to $450 per pound, or more, assuming it is the genuine article and you can find it, almost exclusively in New York and California. (Also assuming anyone in their right mind would pay that much for a couple of pots of brew!).

Kopi Luwak has been ‘cupped’ and some of the various words used to describe it are earthy, heavy, syrupy, caramel, chocolate, complex, typically Indonesian or Sumatran with a mysterious, indescribable nuance, funky zoo-like aroma. H-m-m. Wait a minute. Zoo-like aroma? Why are people willing to pay a small ransom for it?

Turns out there is good reason for the ‘zoo-like’. Kopi Luwak is exceptional because unlike ordinary coffee cherries that are picked off coffee trees, these cherries are retrieved from the jungle floor—but not until after they have been eaten, partially digested and then excreted by palm civets, a small, tree-dwelling marsupial closely related to the raccoon, but looking like a cat or an otter, who thinks the coffee cherries in his habitat make a dandy dessert following a feast of insects, fruit and small rodents.

I am not making this up. The most expensive coffee in the world is harvested from animal poop. I really think this may be where marketing outstrips reality. It’s a case where the gimmick is the essence. Seriously, folks.

Now let me be clear. I have NOT tasted Kopi Luwak. If anyone out there has, I would love to have a firsthand report. If you have a stash, and are willing to share, invite me for coffee. I’m game to try most anything, once. But I think there needs to be a distinction made between specialty “gimmick” coffees and truly special coffees. Many of the coffees produced here in Boquete are exceptional coffees. They each have distinctive, individual profiles, they are consistent, and they both smell and taste really, really good. (Visit www.panamacoffee.org for some of the other exceptional coffees produced in the area). Even amongst the Geishas, there are differences, depending on which farm they come from. At the Panamonte Inn and Spa in Boquete, I was served a small cup of Cafe Don Pachi, the 2011 First Place Specialty Geisha grown by Francisco Serracin. Served black, it needed nothing. Rich, smooth, with mouth-filling sweetness. Completely delicious, and yes, very special.

Back in the 1990’s when Kona coffee was all the rage among the coffee elite, the demand far outpaced the amount being grown. Enterprising coffee moguls decided the limited crop availability was adversely impacting their bottom line—they couldn’t sell what they didn’t have. So they surreptitiously bought coffee from Boquete and surrounding areas (at bargain prices), rebagged  it, labeled it 100% Kona, and sold more Kona than was grown in Hawaii. They were eventually caught, stopped and in at least one case imprisoned, but I daresay 99% of the consumers who bought this “Kona” never had a clue. From this chicanery comes the saying among Boquete’s inner coffee circle, “The best Kona is a Boquete.”

Those of us involved in the coffee industry of Boquete have been watching the attention given to the events of the past few years with great interest. Already more Geisha variety is being cultivated. More and more farms are embracing sustainable agricultural practices and many are pursuing organic certification. International coffee buyers and cuppers are visiting to see first-hand our beautiful cloud forest environment where award winning coffees are being grown. Visitors are taking samples back home and asking, “Where can we order more?”

Boquete coffee already has most of the key elements necessary for becoming an internationally recognized coffee icon: an ideal coffee producing environment (high elevation, volcanic soil, the right balance of moisture and sun in a tropical highland climate), limited availability, and truly exceptional quality. Now, our marketing is improving. The world is taking notice. We don’t need gimmicks. We don’t have to call it something else. We have the real thing.

Word to the wise: Drink the best. Drink Boquete coffee.