What Does Geisha Coffee Taste Like?
Geisha coffee tastes floral and tea-like, with jasmine, citrus, and stone-fruit acidity rather than heavy bitterness. The variety was found in 1931 in Ethiopia's Geisha forest, sent to Kenya, then to Uganda and Tanzania in 1936 and Costa Rica in 1953. It stayed obscure until Panama's Hacienda La Esmeralda separated and entered it in competition.
Prices tell the story: about 21 dollars per pound early on, later reaching 803 dollars. Today the most famous Geisha comes from Boquete on the eastern slope of Barú Volcano, where La Esmeralda, Elida Estate, and Panama NPGE Estate grow it. Gesha Village in Ethiopia represents the variety's original homeland.
Is Geisha coffee really that good? It traveled from the wild forests of Ethiopia to the world stage, endured a long silence, and finally made a stunning debut at Panama's Hacienda La Esmeralda. This article traces the discovery and spread of Geisha, compares the flavor characteristics of two renowned origins—Hacienda La Esmeralda and Gesha Village—reviews its price climb from $21 per pound to $803, and highlights its glorious moments in BOP competitions. Front Street Coffee takes you deep into this highly sought-after coffee variety.
Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) Introduction - Geisha
The Geisha variety was first discovered in 1931 in the Geisha forest of Ethiopia, and was subsequently sent to the Coffee Research Institute in Kenya. In 1936, it was introduced to Uganda and Tanzania; in 1953, Costa Rica also introduced this variety.
For a long time, Geisha did not attract much attention. It was not until Don Pachi first brought Geisha from the town of GESHA in southwestern Ethiopia to Costa Rica, after which Geisha entered Panama along a southern route. Panama's Esmeralda Estate separated it from other varieties and won the national coffee competition championship in one fell swoop, and only then did Geisha formally enter the public eye.
As early as 1904, when the Panama Canal was under construction, a large number of European engineers and senior managers were hired to work in the scorching eastern Panama City. After the Panama Canal was completed in 1917, this group of highly educated intellectuals, especially Nordics, fell in love with Boquete, Panama. The climate here is cool, spring-like all year round, and many chose to stay, buy farms, retire here, and enjoy a living environment filled with rosy clouds, mist, and fragrance.
At present, the most famous Geisha origin is the Boquete region of Panama, a small town located on the eastern slope of Barú Volcano. In the Boquete region, the most famous Geisha coffee-growing estates include the renowned La Esmeralda, Elida Estate, and Panama NPGE Estate.
Because Geisha is mostly grown at elevations of 1,200 meters, has low yield, small beans, and poor flavor, it was once abandoned as a crop.
Coffee trees under shade
In 2004, Jeff, an intellectual who was a green bean purchasing expert, served as a BOP judge. He recalled: a total of twenty-five Panamanian specialty beans entered the finals, but one of them puzzled the judges. Its citrus notes, lime-like acidity, sugarcane sweetness, and jasmine fragrance... filled the room. When sipped, it was like a hundred flowers blooming, dazzling in the mouth like fireworks.
And Ethiopian Yirgacheffe could not possibly possess such rich orange fragrance and honeyed sweetness, so the champion bean was already determined. Estate owner Price explained to everyone that this bean was the Geisha (Geisha) variety, and Geisha became famous ever since.
Changes in the price of Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha: in 2004, $21 per pound; in 2006, $50.25 per pound; in 2007, $130 per pound; in 2010, $170.2 per pound; by the 2017 Best of Panama auction, a lot of Hacienda La Esmeralda natural Geisha fetched a sky-high price of $601 per pound, meaning that one kilogram of green beans was worth as much as 8,900 RMB.
This year, the champion of the 2018 Panama coffee competition was also won by Geisha produced by Hacienda La Esmeralda, with an auction price of $340 per pound.
Beans from 1,700 meters with high hardness and high density have a plump shape, medium particle size, a thick and relatively long body, and are somewhat pointed at both ends.
In specialty coffee bean competitions, the more famous ones include COE (Cup of Excellence) and BOP (Best of Panama). Every year, those already famous coffee estates or newly emerging coffee estates carefully select the best coffee beans they have grown to enter the competition. These "beauties" undergo cupping by senior practitioners in the specialty coffee field, and are then scored from multiple dimensions such as taste, aroma, body, cleanliness, aftertaste, and balance, and finally a weighted total score is calculated to rank them from high to low.
2018 Top Geisha — The Glory of Best of Panama (BOP)
At 7 a.m. on July 20, all 49 lots of award-winning coffee beans released by BOP were auctioned, lasting about 6 hours and 30 minutes. Among them, the natural Geisha numbered BOP-GN-1 fetched a high price of $803 per pound, breaking the record for the highest transaction price (in 2017 BOP produced the super Geisha washed Sofia and the natural Esmeralda Geisha with a bidding price as high as $601 per pound), becoming the "auction king."
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
