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Hacienda La Esmeralda in Boquete, Panama, set records in 2004 when its Geisha fetched $21/lb at the Best of Panama Auction.
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Daniel and Rachel Peterson cup coffee in their lab at Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama.
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Daniel Peterson manages the farms, processing, and production at Hacienda La Esmeralda. Rachel Peterson leads sales and marketing and quality control.
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Coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda’s Jaramillo farm displays the unique characteristics of the area’s terroir, just like fine wine.
It’s 2004. The first college students are signing up for Facebook. Preparations are well underway for the summer Olympics in Athens. George W. Bush will be re-elected and Martha Stewart will go to prison. Justin Timberlake causes Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, and in the town of Boquete, Panama, seven coffee roasters join together to purchase a lot of coffee for a then-unheard-of $21 per pound. It wasn’t even the biggest ticket in town. A flower festival nearby seemed to draw more attention from locals and coffee visitors alike.
Tom Owen of Sweet Maria’s was one of the few roasters and green buyers cataloging his coffee learnings then, often in real-time. On May 1, 2004, he recorded the details of his shared win, noting, “The coffee is grown on a farm called Jaramillo operated by the well-known Finca Esmeralda and the Peterson family. The coffee has an extraordinary character, quite out of place for a Panama, that comes from a combination of a unique environment, high altitude, and a little-known Coffea Arabica cultivar called Geisha.”
The coffee was a mystery, but it wouldn’t be for long. That “extraordinary character” would come to be synonymous with Panama. The Panama Geisha was born in the highlands of Panama, and this year, Hacienda La Esmeralda, managed now by siblings Rachel and Daniel Peterson, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its discovery with a private auction taking place on August 22, paying tribute to the unique flavors of the Panama Highlands.
A Panama Geisha coffee plant from Hacienda La Esmeralda.
There is much debate in the coffee world about whether the variety should be spelled Geisha or Gesha. History claims that in 1936, unique coffee plants were found growing wild in the rainforest on Mt. Gesha in southwestern Ethiopia. The British consul collected samples and labeled them ‘Geisha,’ a phonetic spelling of the Ethiopian word. The coffee variety has no connection to the geisha culture of Japan; it is merely a coincidence.
As the seeds traveled to Central America, they continued to be labeled Geisha. Hacienda La Esmeralda uses this spelling because that is how the variety came to them from Costa Rica. In other parts of the world, the variety is spelled gesha. In this article, the author uses Geisha when referring specifically to Panama Geisha and gesha when discussing the broader gesha varieties grown around the world.
With 20 years of success and many milestones to celebrate, the Petersons wanted this celebration to be inclusive—a unique and all-encompassing sensory experience for their loyal clientele.
“For us, there’s always a reason to look for something that we can celebrate,” said Rachel Peterson. “[This auction] is geared towards them, towards their satisfaction, their senses, and towards having something unique and special for us.”
Everything from their website to the sample boxes is meant to focus and guide buyers towards the unique sensory experience of Esmeralda’s terroir, which again takes center stage in this year’s coffees. The unique combination of flora, fauna, and Esmeralda’s micro-climates are on display.
Bidders will vie for 20 lots of Green-Tip Geisha, processed in a variety of ways from Esmeralda’s three farms, Jaramillo, Canas Verdes, and El Velo. Eighteen of the lots are just 10 kilograms each, while two lots are only 6 kilograms each.
“We decided to do a very, very small auction lot size [this year] only because we really want to be able to bring out all of our different production areas, and some of them were very, very small,” Rachel said.
With such small lots, it’s reasonable to think that there might be some record-breaking pricing again this year. Esmeralda, after all, has been known to set a few records, even among the highly competitive Panama auction scene. Last year, one of their smallest auction lots sold for $2,504 per kilo to Jeff Kim Dong Wan, a green coffee buyer for Coffee Me Up in Korea.
Reflecting on the 20 years since their Geisha took the top spot at the 2004 Best of Panama competition, Daniel Peterson said that in addition to Esmeralda’s price-setting records in 2004, 2013, and 2017 in the Best of Panama competitions, a personal point of pride was when, in 2007, bids exceeded $100/lb and caused the auction site to temporarily crash. The site was not set up to accept three-figure bids, and after a brief scramble between the auction host and the buyer, the bidding continued, and Hacienda La Esmeralda’s lot sold for $130 per pound.
On the winning side of that $130 per pound lot was a group of buyers that included Groundwork Coffee Co., then led by Ric Rhinehart. Rhinehart, former SCA President and a former Best of Panama Head Judge, has a storied history with Esmeralda and was one of the first coffee buyers to taste and then later win Esmeralda’s Geisha auction lots.
“Panama had the problem that I like to call the problem with Panama, which was that all the coffee just tasted like coffee,” said Rhinehart. “Geisha really broke that mold and enabled a lot of other things to happen with Panama.”
Owen was also part of the original buying group with Rhinehart and among the first buyers to discover and regularly purchase Esmeralda auction lots. He also sees Esmeralda Geisha as pivotal for the specialty industry’s growth.
“Everyone wanted coffee to be like wine, and along came [Esmeralda] Geisha,” said Owen. “It was like a story that was already written.”
Taking after the high-end wine industry, Panama Geisha helped shape the specialty coffee industry’s understanding of how much a coffee is worth and why, and this value hinged on taste and terroir. The door for other arabica varieties to follow suit was opened. While different varieties did command high prices on occasion – think in Guatemala when El Injerto’s Mocca sold for $500 per pound in a 2012 auction – none had the staying power of gesha, which gained prominence outside of Panama.
Auction data from 54 coffee auctions worldwide during the last two years shows that of all lots auctioned, 30% were gesha varieties, with an average price of $30 per pound. Bourbon came in a distant second, making up 13% of auction lots with an average price of $11.87 per pound. Only java and laurina varieties commanded higher average prices than geshas, but those two varieties combined made up just over 3% of all lots auctioned.
Owen and Rhinehart rode the Esmeralda Geisha wave for several years, but as the farm and variety gained fame and the price continued to rise in auctions, the early adopters that helped shape the industry by helping to introduce a new taste experience were crowded out by higher-end buyers in emerging markets, vowing to win the best coffee in the world year after year.
After reflecting on last year’s auction purchase, Jeff at Coffee Me Up admitted he thought his Esmeralda Geisha was “too cheap” and that the coffee should have a higher value. So what continues to make Esmeralda Geisha worth the high price?
“Firstly, the taste,” Jeff said. “Esmeralda’s coffee taste is unique; no other farm has [it]. Also history. Coffee price is not decided by taste only. We respect the history that we cannot see and taste.”
Jeff also touched on the contentious topic of infused coffees that has recently come to a head in the Best of Panama competition. He says that while experimental and infused coffees are “fun” he only buys “pure” coffees for his market. For the Petersons, pure means carefully controlled processing with no infusions or co-fermentations like the coffees that were rejected from the Best of Panama competition.
Daniel Peterson notes that in the last 20 years, they’ve homed in on several methods, some more traditional than others, that have landed on the “cleaner” side of processing in order for Esmeralda’s signature flavors of jasmine, mandarin, and stonefruit to always shine through. Twenty years of auction success seems to prove that this method is tried and true. While it’s clear that the Specialty Association of Panama seeks to keep infused or co-fermented coffees out of the current auction format to clearly distinguish them from “genuine specialty coffee,” it’s unlikely that this will be the end of the discussion of infused coffees in the Panama coffee ecosystem.
In 20 years, no other singular variety or process has been able to unseat gesha from its throne, particularly the Panama Geisha brought about through the Peterson’s meticulous nurturing. But in the spirit of celebrating the records and boundaries pushed by the Esmeralda Geisha, it’s important to remember that it was also once rejected from the cupping table for not fitting the profile of Panama coffee, and it broke that rule, too. For now, Panama Geisha remains the gold standard by which all other coffees are compared.