Panama Geisha Tasting Kit

1. La Esmeralda Vista 4HC / Washed / Peterson Family / 1815+m
2. La Esmeralda Mural 6NB / Natural / Peterson Family / 1815+m
3. Lamastus Elida Falda #0404 / Washed / Lamastus Family / 1700m
4. Lamastus Elida Falda #0503 / Natural / Lamastus Family / 1700m
5. Janson Hacienda #121 / Washed / Janson Family / 1350m
6. Janson Hacienda #136 / Natural / Janson Family / 1350m

• Cultivar: Geisha
• Country: Panama
• Pack: 6 x 60 g = 360 g

The 6 Geishas Tasting Kit

Six Geishas, three producers, two processes, 650 meters of altitude variations. This kit puts Panama’s most celebrated variety side by side in six lots from Hacienda La Esmeralda, Lamastus Family Estates and Janson Coffee, grown in the highlands of Chiriquí between roughly 1,350 and 2,000 meters above sea level. Each producer appears with a washed and a natural lot grown in the same place, so the main difference between the two cups is the process. Together, the six lots take you from Janson’s lower slopes to the high-altitude estates of Elida and Esmeralda, all in the same variety. Brew them one after another or blind, and see how farm, altitude and process shape the cup.

Hacienda La Esmeralda

Hacienda La Esmeralda is the Peterson family’s estate on the slopes of Volcán Barú in Boquete, Panama, and the farm that brought Geisha to global attention after its record-setting Best of Panama win in 2004. Vista and Mural both come from El Velo, the estate’s newest farm, bought in 2012. At about 50 hectares, it is the one Esmeralda property flat enough to be planted in uniform rows, mostly with Geisha and Catuai, alongside small plantings of Laurina, Pacamara and SL-34. El Velo is also a research site: the family has planted several hundred other coffee varieties there, sourced from the CATIE gene bank in Costa Rica, to find out what else the altitude can produce. Both lots are lot-separated and processed in two ways, washed and natural.

Lamastus Family Estates, Elida Estate

The Lamastus family has grown coffee in Boquete, Panama, for four generations. It began with Robert Lamastus, a Kentucky-born farmer who planted Arabica on the slopes of the Barú Volcano around 1,700 meters above sea level and exported coffee from the start. Today the family still grows, processes, exports and roasts its own coffees across three estates: Elida, El Burro and Luito, the Geisha estate. The farms sit on young volcanic soil at high elevation, bordering Volcán Barú National Park, with shade-grown trees and large areas set aside as ecological reserve. Cherries are hand-picked at full ripeness by Ngäbe Buglé pickers, processed as Natural, Washed or Honey, then rested in burlap sacks on wooden floors for 60 to 100 days before the family exports them directly. Both Falda lots come from the same lot at Elida.

Janson Coffee

Janson Coffee grew out of a family farm in Volcán, in Panama’s Chiriquí province. In 1926 Carl Axel Janson left Sweden at 21 and settled there, building a dairy and livestock operation. In the 1980s the family tested the soil, saw the potential for coffee, and in 1990 his sons formally founded Janson Coffee. Today three generations of the family run the operation, producing Catuai, Caturra, Pacamara and Geisha for the Panamanian and export markets. The farm invests visibly in its people and land: housing and preventive health care for permanent and seasonal workers, an on-farm daycare for harvesters’ children, about 400 solar panels, reuse of processing by-products as fuel or fertilizer, and a native-tree nursery supporting reforestation and spring protection. Both lots in this kit come from Hacienda, the family’s farm plot, which sits lower on the volcano than their Los Alpes plot.