On the podium of the 2025 BOP Traditional Variety category, standing behind Hacienda La Esmeralda and Dark Moon Estate, was Cantera Farm — 92.25 points, third place. This achievement belongs to the Garrido family, and to the sisters Gissell and Liliana, who managed the farm at the time.
The Garrido family's coffee-growing history dates back to 1959. That year, Teodoro Garrido planted his first coffee trees in the highlands of Boquete, and from then on this mountain farm was bound to coffee. More than sixty years later, the family has passed down to the third generation: mother Irma, together with her daughters Gissell and Liliana, runs the operation, owning several parcels including Cantera, Volcancito, Margarita, and Los Rosales, scattered across the slopes of Boquete at different elevations. If there is any signature achievement of the Garrido family, it must surely involve Mokkita. Around 2005, family member José David Garrido discovered a mutated coffee tree bearing extremely small fruit at Mama Cata Estate, which experts identified as a rare and unique genotype within Arabica. The family spent years propagating it, and today Mokkita is planted only sporadically in Boquete, yet its back-to-back first-place finishes in the BOP non-Geisha category in 2020 and 2021 made the name Garrido known to the world.
The Cantera parcel sits at an elevation of about 1,300 to 1,450 meters, with typical volcanic ash soil. It receives highland sunlight during the day, and temperatures drop rapidly after nightfall, with the diurnal temperature difference providing conditions for the coffee to mature slowly. The Garrido family calls this microclimate "the source of flavor balance" — acidity, sweetness, and mouthfeel checking and balancing one another within the same batch of beans. The family is not content with Mokkita alone; today their farm also grows Geisha, Typica, and several other varieties, and they have experimented with washed, natural, and honey processing. At the 2025 BOP, it was precisely this batch of traditional varieties that took third place in the category with 92.25 points, extending the family's long-standing strength on the non-Geisha track.
From a single coffee tree in 1959 to a third-place finish for traditional varieties on the 2025 BOP podium, the Garrido family has proven one thing through three generations of patience: in a Panama dominated by Geisha, there is still a place for traditional varieties — as long as someone is willing to keep planting them, generation after generation.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
