Willem Boot shows first tree planted at Finca La Mula.
Panamanian geisha coffees produced by Willem Boot, a San Francisco-area coffee consultant, grower and roaster, won three Good Food Awards on January 16.
Three different roasters were awarded prizes for coffee sourced at Boot’s farms. JBC Coffee Roasters in Madison, Wisc., and Mudhouse Coffee Roasters in Charlottesville, Va., entered roasts using coffee from Boot’s Finca La Mula. A third award went to Equator Coffees & Teas of Marin, Calif., for coffee grown at Finca Sophia, a Panamanian farm co-owned by Boot, Helen Russell and Brooke McDonnell.
JBC and Mudhouse are long-time consulting clients, said Boot. He developed the partnership with Equator in 2008. Boot fell in love with the flavor of geisha coffee in 2004 as a taster on the panel where it was first presented. "I became obsessed with geisha and went off to Ethiopia to discover the roots of this variety in the forests of western Ethiopia,” he said. "One day, the roar of a blood-thirsty lion following our tracks make me come to my senses," said Boot. He operates Finca La Mula on the lion-less slopes of Volcan Baru, a dormant volcano near the border with Costa Rica. The farm has 6,000 shade-grown trees. In 2016 Boot will open a Coffee Campus and R&D center in San Rafael, Calif.
Learn more: www.bootcoffee.com