High Life

HIGH LIFE #15 Dec 2017 71 N ot long ago, the Best of Panama coffee auction held by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama broke all price records with the sale of a 100 pound lot from Hacienda La Esmeralda. The coffee, a natural processed Geisha cultivated at 1,800 meters above sea level in the mountainous region of Boquete, western Panama, fetched no less than US$601 per pound. Dubbed the “mother of all coffee records,” the recent sale is no doubt a result of the top-scoring batch of Hacienda La Esmeralda earning 94.1 points out of 100. For the first time, Panama Geisha is presenting coffee as a luxury product – one that deserves a high price for its distinctive and unrivalled cup profile. In 1964, Hacienda La Esmeralda was bought by Rudolph A Peterson, a Californianbanker.The landcomprised an area of several hundred hectares in the Palmira region which, in 1987, was planted with coffee trees by the Peterson family. The family purchased another farm in 1996, Esmeralda Jaramillo, where they discovered the famous Geisha trees named after the village in Ethiopia where they were first found in the 1930s. The ground-breaking discovery revolutionized the coffee industry and led to the family’s consequential wins in the Best of Panama competition beginning in 2006. Now, the Petersons are known worldwide as elite coffee producers who consistently break price records at coffee auctions.