Panama Esmeralda Reserva De Cabaña Geisha Natural

Embark on a delightful coffee journey with our Panama Esmeralda Reserva De Cabaña Geisha Natural from the renowned Hacienda La Esmeralda. This award-winning brew is bursting with an intense blueberry aroma that will tantalize your senses. Enjoy its sweet, balanced body and savor the irresistible flavor notes of blueberry, blackberry and a jasmine finish. Each sip reveals undertones of raspberry, complemented by a clean and sweet body. Indulge in every moment! 

Hacienda La Esmeralda Sweeps Best of Panama 2025. At the 2025 Best of Panama (BOP) competition, Hacienda La Esmeralda set new world records with jaw-dropping scores:

• Geisha Washed: 98.00 pts (World Record)

• Geisha Natural: 97.00 pts (World Record)

• Varietals Category: 92.88 pts

Reserva de Cabaña 4 BANC was harvested on February 3rd, 2026 from the highest elevation of the Cabaña lot in Hacienda La Esmeralda’s Cañas Verdes Farm. After harvest, the coffee cherries were pre-dried for 3 days outside on raised beds and then fermented for 5 days in a stainless steel anaerobic tank in our cold fermentation room. Finally, the drying phase was completed in our climate - controlled drying room for 48 days. An indoor facility with constant airflow and precise temperature and humidity control. Reserva de Cabaña 4 BANC has notes of jasmine, peach, and brown sugar.

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

Discover the coffee that changed the industry, Hacienda La Esmeralda is iconic for having rediscovered Geisha in 2004. It was a happenstance of altitude and lot separation that discovered Geisha’s amazing flavors and aromatics. We have a long time relationship with the Peterson's, these Geisha micro-lots coffee collection are sold exclusively by direct trade. Since 2004 the Peterson family have worked hard to create the infrastructure that supports a Geisha production, that consistently delivers the attributes that made the world fall in love with this special coffee variety.

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Hacienda La Esmeralda Sweeps Best of Panama 2025. At the 2025 Best of Panama (BOP) competition, Hacienda La Esmeralda set new world records with jaw-dropping scores:

- Geisha Washed: 98.00 pts (World Record)

- Geisha Natural: 97.00 pts (World Record)

- Varietals Category: 92.88 pts

BEST OF PANAMA 2004
Panama Esmeralda Buenos Aires Geisha Anaerobic Natural is a part of the Esmeralda Special Reserve, an award-winning coffee collection that has garnered continuous international prizes since we first introduced it fifteen years ago.It was this high-altitude planting of Geisha coffee that helped set in motion the events of 2004, when Geisha’s amazing aromatics first became clear. This was in the lead-up to the Best of Panama competition, an annual coffee cupping competition and auction that had been gaining significant interest amongst a group of next generation coffee producers in Panama. For that year’s competition, the Petersons did something they had never done before—during processing, they separated production from different areas of the farm into individual lots. One of the lots they separated came from high up in Jaramillo, and when it landed on the cupping table, it blew everyone away.

This was the first time that cuppers had gotten to taste a sample that was 100% Geisha coffee, and when they did, it was clear that Hacienda La Esmeralda had something new on their hands—the explosion of juicy brightness and multi-layered aromatics in a high-altitude Geisha coffee were more reminiscent of a coffee from Ethiopia then Latin America. Once the initial shock was processed, the cuppers couldn’t get enough of it. Hacienda La Esmeralda went on to win the 2004 Best of Panama competition with their Geisha coffee, and that year set a record for the highest price ever paid for a coffee at auction.

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, with the land first dedicated to pasture for beef and, later, dairy cattle. Several small growers have grown coffee in this hard-to-reach area for some time. After the rediscovery of Geisha, the Peterson family began purchasing smaller lots around the original Cañas Verdes farm and expanding their Geisha production. Since then, many award-winning Esmeralda Geisha lots have come from the hillsides of Cañas Verdes.

The farm shifts from rolling hills to a steep 40 degree incline, making harvesting a challenging and laborious affair. However, the high altitudes also bring out the bright, floral aromatics of the Geisha. With cooler temperatures and massive shade trees that have been standing for ages, it turns out that Jaramillo is the perfect place for this variety to land. To this day, many of their top performing micro-lots of Geisha coffee come from little patches on the slopes of Jaramillo. The Jaramillo mountain air is wet and cold, perfect for making the aromatics of the Geisha variety sing. Although Geisha variety coffees had been planted sporadically across the area, the rediscovery of Geisha came from a small, isolated region on this farm.

THE BEGINNINGS
The lands that make up Hacienda La Esmeralda were first brought together as a single estate by a Swede named Hans Elliot in 1940. This land comprised several hundred hectares in what are now the Palmira and Cañas Verdes farms. In 1967, a Swedish- American banker by the name of Rudolph A. Peterson (1904-2003) bought Hacienda La Esmeralda as a retirement venture. At the time, the land was predominantly pasture for beef cattle, with some small smatterings of coffee mixed in.

By 1975 the Petersons had switched the farms over to dairy cattle, which performed quite well and still make up half of Esmeralda’s farm land today. In the mid-80s, the family sought further diversification, and coffee, with its rich production history in the Boquete region, presented a perfect opportunity.

Coffee had been growing on lands in and around Hacienda La Esmeralda since at least 1890. It was this huge reservoir of coffee knowledge and culture that helped the Petersons redevelop much of their land for coffee farming and even make their first coffee farm expansion at Palmira in 1988. It bears mentioning that coffee at this time was almost exclusively an undifferentiated, mass-market, endeavor in Panama. It was not until the mid-1990s that some North American coffee buyers started talking about Specialty Coffee widely.

In 1997 the Petersons purchased the land that became the Jaramillo Farm. This plot on the sides of Volcan Baru was selected for its high altitude, in hopes of developing higher scoring, livelier and more nuanced coffees. That said, it was only by serendipity that the famous Geisha coffee was planted on this farm.

Proceeds from this coffee have gone to such programs as a school for employees’ children during harvest with hot meals; a supply of rice, beans, and sardines for all harvesters and their families while they live on the farm; and a bi-annual bonus of at least 30%. Our partner, the Peterson family, began purchasing smaller lots around the original Cañas Verdes farm after 2004.