Your Cart is Empty
Sold Out
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Not all Geisha’s score over 90 points on a cupping table. Ya, there you go, now you know. Geisha’s have a reputation for being super expensive and equally exotic coffees, but they have also been planted ad nauseam in the past decade, and now there are coffee farmers that produce high volumes of Geisha. The variety is amazing, don’t get me wrong, and when properly cared for, it will produce very high quality, but not 100% of the coffee will score the ultra high scores that warrant an exorbitant price.
Wilmer Dubon and Elder Chavez are one of the early adopters of Geisha in Santa Barbara. I brought them seeds of Geisha from Panama, from none other than the award winning Hartmann farm. Wilmer planted his Geisha in his creme-de-la-creme farm “El Bordo”, while Elder first planted it in his farm “La Herencia” and eventually replanted his high farm “El Mirador” with 100% Geisha.
I cupped through every single lot of Geisha from both of them, and split them into two categories. The first was an exemplary, world-class Geisha, for which we paid very high prices. This was a very small amount that belongs in one of our tins. The second category was for Geisha that still tasted amazing (i.e. over 87 points) but was much higher volume. This coffee was still paid at very high prices, but at a price that allows us to offer it as a more regular coffee - thus allowing us to buy a high volume of this coffee. This helps us and it helps Wilmer and Elder.
The reason we’re blending these lots is that in the grand scheme of things, these are still relatively small lots of coffee. In the future, as their Geisha production reaches maturity, we will keep them separated.
OK, about the coffees. Wilmer’s Geisha is grown at around 1750m; while Elder’s varies from 1650m to 1800m. The coffees went through a brief anaerobic fermentation in cherry form, and were then washed by traditional fermentation of approximately 30-40 hours.
- Sebastian
