Panama La Esmeralda Geisha Coffee International Auction Process - How Are Red Label Geisha Coffees Auctioned?

Panama Coffee: The Rise of Geisha

Over the past 5-6 years, Panama has been the most talked-about coffee origin in Central America. The main reason is the Geisha variety cultivated by Hacienda La Esmeralda, run by the Peterson family. This Geisha has driven coffee enthusiasts wild — many call it the world's finest coffee bean. Hacienda La Esmeralda has won the Panama coffee competition year after year and is hailed as a national treasure of Panama.

The Peterson family operates the estate on corporate lines, centered on the Mario, Caballeriza, and Naranjo areas — three production zones on the same high mountain (Mario at roughly 1,500-1,650 meters, Caballeriza at roughly 1,500 meters, Naranjo at roughly 1,450 meters). They acquire neighboring farms with differing altitudes, terrain, and soil (volcanic terrain), applying the most advanced and meticulous cultivation techniques under strict management to produce Geisha of extremely high quality. Add to that how perfectly the Geisha variety suits Panama's natural conditions, and the resulting coffee becomes as precious as pearls, bean by bean.

Website: http://coffee.stoneworks.com/auction/index.cfm

Interested bidders should watch that website in March: register as a member, pay a $250 USD fee, and you will receive sample beans — and the right to participate in three auctions.

Esmeralda Special 2010

Hacienda La Esmeralda is currently the only single estate in Panama to open its coffee to global bidding. The reason is simple: its Geisha is so famous, and its quality so exceptionally elegant and delicate, that international buyers, roasters, and enthusiasts compete for every fresh harvest. With demand that intense, the estate decided to open global bidding as a single estate.

This year's Esmeralda Special Auction puts 7 batches of Geisha from 5 production areas up for international bidding, in order: Mario, Baru, Caballeriza, Naranjo, Colga. Lots from the Mario area are named after festivals tied to the harvest months: Carnaval (harvested in February) honors the carnival held every February; San Jose (harvested in March) commemorates Saint Joseph on March 19th each year; and Enero (harvested in January) simply means January in Spanish.

Auction Lots

• ES1-Mario Carnaval (6600 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 22 batches total)
• ES2-Mario San Jose (4200 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 14 batches total)
• ES3-Mario Enero (1500 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 5 batches total)
• ES4-Baru (3600 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 12 batches total)
• ES5-Caballeriza (1200 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 4 batches total)
• ES6-Naranjo (3300 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 11 batches total)
• ES7-Colga (3000 pounds, 300 pounds per bidding unit, 10 batches total)

Bidding Rules

1. Bidding opens for one hour. After that hour, if any buyer bids on any batch within a two-minute window, all batches reset to two minutes. This continues until all buyers stop raising their prices.
2. The coffee from each production area is evenly divided into 300-pound batches, so ES1-01 will not differ from ES1-02. The particularly high price of ES1-01 may owe more to Korean buyers' psychology than to any real difference — in fact, price gaps across a large lot such as ES5-Caballeriza's Geisha are not significant.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Reading about the auction is one thing; tasting the legend is another. FrontStreet Coffee's Esmeralda Red Label Geisha is the estate's "Esmeralda Special" line: grown at 1,600-1,800 meters, every lot must cup above 90 points, carries its own independent lot number, and comes entirely from one small plot — the same micro-lot logic that drives the international auction. For a more accessible route into the same estate's flavor, the Esmeralda Green Label Geisha ("Private Collection") blends lots from multiple high-altitude plots into the estate's signature Geisha profile at a notably lower price.

And if you simply want an affordable first taste of Panamanian Geisha, FrontStreet Coffee's Boquete Geisha delivers the classic orange-blossom honey sweetness, oolong-tea texture, delicate fruit acidity, and clearly layered cup of high-quality Panama Geisha — no bidding paddle required.