Origin record
Boquete, Panama
Where Gesha became the most expensive name in coffee in 2004 - and where the name and the genetics started to come apart.
Commonly got wrong
Gesha grown in Boquete is not automatically the Panamanian T2722 material, and Gesha grown elsewhere is frequently a different population sharing the name. The 2004 Best of Panama result that made the variety famous applies to specific farms and specific plantings, not to the name.
Boquete is a small region on the slopes of the Baru volcano, and in 2004 it changed what the top of the coffee market looks like.
What actually happened in 2004
The Peterson family entered a Gesha into the Best of Panama competition and it produced a cup profile – intensely floral, jasmine and bergamot, tea-like in body – that judges had not encountered in that form. The variety had been collected in the Gesha region of western Ethiopia and reached Central America in 1953 as accession T2722.
The spelling drifted to “Geisha” on an import manifest and stuck, which is why both spellings are in circulation for the same material.
The name outran the genetics
What followed is the clearest case in coffee of a name detaching from what it describes. Gesha is now planted in many countries, and material sold under the name is frequently a different Ethiopian population that shares it. Even within Panama, not every Gesha planting traces to T2722.
The practical consequence for a buyer is that “Gesha” on a bag establishes a price expectation and not a genetic fact. Where a lot has been tested, that is worth far more than the name – and testing is rare.
A different competition, a different form
Best of Panama is not Cup of Excellence. It runs its own protocol, and a Best of Panama score and a Cup of Excellence score are two measurements that happen to share a hundred-point scale. Ranking them against each other is a category error, however tempting the arithmetic looks.
Qualifications on the record
- What the price actually refers to
- Best of Panama auction results are the highest sustained per-pound figures in coffee. They are a separate competition from Cup of Excellence with its own protocol, and the two are not comparable as scores.
- Competition editions
- Best of Panama, not Cup of Excellence.
- Typical cup
- The washed Gesha profile that made the region famous: jasmine, bergamot, a tea-like body and a long floral finish.