Producer: Hacienda La Esmeralda
Farm: Cañas Verdes
Region: Boquete
Altitude: 1,700 masl
Varietal: Gesha
Process: Washed
Roast: Light
Notes: Caramel, Lemon Iced Tea, Nectarine

Available whole bean in a 50g jar or a 4oz pouch. This coffee roasts and ships on Mondays and Thursdays only.

This high-elevation microlot from the Esmeralda Special collection was grown at the famed Cañas Verdes farm. The León lot comprises 4.5 hectares in production, with an average tree age of 10 years. After harvest, the coffee cherries are taken to Hacienda La Esmeralda’s mill in Palmira to be washed and then dried for 16 days on a concrete patio.

Cañas Verdes has a distinct three to four month dry season, but even then, the air is cool. Half of Cañas Verdes is part of the original Peterson holdings, purchased in 1967, which had previously been dedicated to pasture for beef and, later, dairy cattle. Several small growers had grown coffee in this hard-to-reach area for some time. After the rediscovery of the Gesha variety in Panama in 2004, the Peterson family began purchasing smaller lots around the original Cañas Verdes farm and expanding production. Since then, many award-winning Esmeralda Gesha lots have come from the hillsides of Cañas Verdes.

We've been proud to offer exceptional coffees from Hacienda La Esmeralda for more than a decade. All of their farms are Rainforest Alliance Certified, attesting to Esmeralda's sustainable practices: reusing leftover coffee pulp as a fertilizer; maintaining forests along watersheds; timing coffee tree pruning around bird nesting season; using hydroelectricity and sustainable wood burning to run the coffee mill; and more.

But the Petersons are not resting on their laurels: they are currently testing 32 different processes, including combinations of fermentations, yeast inoculations, and drying techniques. Working with a local university, they are isolating and culturing native yeasts found at their farms and on coffee cherries, including different genera such as Pichia, Candida, and Saccharomyces. The various yeasts have been used to inoculate coffee fermentations, with the most successful trials increasing the floral and stone fruit qualities inherent to Gesha when compared to commercial alternatives.