STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 43 Daniel and Rachel Peterson cup coffees in their lab at Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama. With 20 years of success and many milestones to celebrate, the Petersons wanted this celebration to be inclusive— a unique and all-encompassing sensory experience for their loyal clientele. "For us, there's always a reason to look for something that we can celebrate," said Rachel Peterson. "[This auction] is geared towards them; towards their satisfaction; their senses; towards having something unique and special for us." Everything from their website to the sample boxes is meant to focus and guide buyers towards the unique sensory expe- rience of Esmeralda's terroir, which again takes center stage in this year's coffees. The unique combination of flora, fauna, and Esmeralda's micro-climates are on display. Bidders will vie for 20 lots of Green- Tip Geisha, processed in a variety of ways from Esmeralda's three farms, Jaramillo, Canas Verdes, and El Velo. Eighteen of the lots are just 10 kilograms each, while two lots are only 6 kilograms each. "We decided to do a very, very small auction lot size [this year] only because we really want to be able to bring out all of our different production areas, and some of them were very, very small," Ra- chel said. With such small lots, it's reasonable to think that there might be some record- breaking pricing again this year. Esmer- alda, after all, has been known to set a few records, even among the highly com- petitive Panama auction scene. Last year, one of their smallest auction lots sold for $2,504 per kilo to Jeff Kim Dong Wan, a green coffee buyer for Coffee Me Up in Korea. Reflecting on the 20 years since their Geisha took the top spot at the 2004 Best of Panama competition, Daniel Peterson said that in addition to Esmeralda's price- setting records in 2004, 2013, and 2017 in the Best of Panama competitions, a per- sonal point of pride was when, in 2007, bids exceeded $100/lb and caused the auction site to temporarily crash. The site was not set up to accept three-figure bids, and after a brief scramble between the auction host and the buyer, the bidding continued, and Hacienda La Esmeralda's lot sold for $130 per pound. On the winning side of that $130 per pound lot was a group of buyers that in- cluded Groundwork Coffee Co., then led by Ric Rhinehart. Rhinehart, former SCA President and a former Best of Panama Head Judge has a storied history with Esmer- alda and was one of the first coffee buyers to taste and then later win Esmeralda's Geisha auction lots. "Panama had the problem that I like to call the problem with Panama, which was that all the coffee just tasted like coffee," said Rhinehart. "Geisha really broke that mold and enabled a lot of other things to happen with Panama." Owen was also part of the original buying group with Rhinehart and among the first buyers to discover and regularly purchase Esmeralda auction lots. He also sees Esmeralda Geisha as pivotal for the specialty industry's growth. "Everyone wanted coffee to be like wine, and along came [Esmeralda] Geisha," said Owen. "It was like a story that was already written." Taking after the high-end wine industry, Panama Geisha helped shape the specialty coffee industry's understanding of how much a coffee is worth and why, and this value hinged on taste and terroir. The door for other arabica varieties to follow suit was opened. While different varieties did command high prices on occasion – think in Guatemala when El Injerto's Mocca sold for $500 per pound in a 2012 auction – none had the staying power of gesha, which gained prominence outside of Panama. Auction data from 54 coffee auctions worldwide during the last two years shows that of all lots auctioned, 30% were gesha varieties, with an average price of $30 per pound. Bourbon came in a distant second, making up 13% of auction lots with an average price of $11.87 per pound. Only java and laurina varieties commanded higher average prices than geshas, but those two varieties combined made up just over 3% of all lots auctioned.

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