Panama – Home to the world’s most picky coffee

– FIND THE ORIGIN –

Panama is home to the world’s largest red coffee. What is so special about this country that can make the rare Panamanian Gesha coffee expensive and praise by the international coffee world with the most flowery adjectives? Bring a backpack with 43 Factory Coffee Roaster to explore this magical country.

Gesha Panama Coffee Journey

What is unique about the place where red coffee is grown?

Panama is a country in Central America with a total territory of 75,420 km², bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and south by the Pacific Ocean.

Coffee was brought to Panama in the 19th century and is mainly produced by smallholder farmers of about 1-10 hectares and large-scale privately owned farms. The tropical climate, fertile soil accumulated from volcanic lava, diverse elevations, and abundant pure groundwater have nourished coffees with unique flavors. Typically, the most expensive and sought-after Gesha coffee variety in the world.

Journey to nurture a taste

Panamanian Gesha originated from the wild coffee variety found in the 1930s in a small village called Gesha of Ethiopia – the capital of traditional coffee roots. This variety has a rich, unique flavor, from the smell of meadows and sweet and sour fruits to pies or chocolate. In 1953, Gesha was sent to the Tanzania Research Station and then to the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Central America for analysis and development.

By 1960, when Gesha was recognized as resistant to rust, the variety was designated T2722 and popularly distributed in Panama via CATIE. Initially, Gesha grew slowly, low quality, until it was moved to farming in the Chiriqui Plateau, Boquete. Here, the new breed Gesha reveals all the wonderful essence in each note. 

The journey of developing the Gesha variety passed through long and arduous variations. It grew with the people’s passion and Panama’s nature. In the last 20 years, the Gesha variety transformed from wild coffee into premium coffee. The turning point was the Best of Panama contest (2004). Unlike the taste of grassland or bitter-sweet chocolate in Ethiopia, Gesha Panama grows on volcanic land at over 1,200m possessing delicate, precise flavors like tea, lemon blossom, and ginger. It all evokes the scent of sunshine, wind, and towering vertical cliffs full of aggression. The taste changes gently and balanced, bringing clarity and ethereal from melon, citrus, papaya, peach, and lychee. Thanks to those distinctive flavors, Panamanian Gesha coffee has surpassed the world record for coffee at more than $1,300 per pound.

Panama coffee – The world’s proudest coffee variety

Coffee varieties are picky about the soil

Today Gesha Panama is grown in many different countries but is still warmly sought after and known as the coffee that represents Panama. Because Gesha is a very picky plant, and only Panama is one of the pickiest coffee varieties in the world. Gesha coffee trees are lovely, but they also require a large amount of land (1ha of land can only grow 1,200 trees, too little compared to 8,000 trees of other types). It prefers to grow at towering heights but is very sensitive to weather, water, and soil. Each land, altitude, humidity, and climate also easily change the quality of beans and coffee flavor. Only one factor, such as insufficient height, will become weak, slow to grow, and bland. Only the magical land of Panama can indulge in this kind of arrogant red coffee. 

With vast plateaus and abundant groundwater combined with fertile silt from volcanoes such as Barú, Chiriqui,…, Panama is the ideal place to produce this complex coffee’s pure, unmistakable taste quickly. Gesha Panama is famous in the coffee world for its liveliness and smoothness and diverse flavors of many different growing regions and heights. When talking about any Gesha species here, creating a wave of response in the professional coffee world is easy.

Picky about who understands

Spoiled and cherished little by little, the Gesha flavor is also very picky. Gesha is evaluated entirely differently, with a highly complex flavor structure that is difficult to describe and requires users to dig deep to understand. Some experts say that Gesha is sweet and gentle but very complex and intense. The sweet and sour taste is pure and clear, like a cup of tea smoothly combining the delicate tropical fruit aroma with the scent of grass and clean and rich mountain forests. And this special flavor, no matter how prepared by any method, still radiates and changes rhythmically and vividly with a long, perfect aftertaste to each layer of flavor. An experienced person must be patient, feel and understand every bar, every beautiful movement of this miraculous coffee.

So delicate and magical, Gesha is always on the Top of the top coffees with the most expensive price list in the world. According to statistics, the average price of Gesha coffee beans is 3.5 million VND/kg and can reach 10 million VND/kg. A reasonably high price compared to regular coffee requires users to understand and feel worthy to experience. Even at auctions, coffee can be valued at up to 60 million / kg and does not have to have money to buy. 

It’s no exaggeration that Gesha is the pride of Panama and the pinnacle symbol of specialty coffee. This coffee variety has a unique history, journey, and story that needs a place to belong and people to understand to feel the deep, quintessential value inside. It is a fact because coffee grew up with ideal soil and the enthusiasm of the people where this world-class red coffee is grown.