CR-94 Panama Baru Volcano | 2018 90+ Geisha [Honey Process] TISCA Pour-Over Championship Selection

FrontStreet Coffee Recommends Geisha 2018 - Geisha Village Geisha | Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha Green Label

Panama 90+ Baru Volcano Gesha [Honey Process]

Panama Honey NinetyPlus Baru Gesha

Coffee Review Score = 94

Aroma: 9

Acidity/Structure: 9

Body: 9

Flavor: 9

Aftertaste: 8

Blind Cupping Notes:

Refreshingly sweet and sour, with American grapes (Concord grapes), chocolate, cedar, musk, and magnolia aromas. Balanced sweet-and-sour juice flavors, smooth and saturated mouthfeel. The finish features harmonious fruit and floral notes with chocolate undertones.

This coffee comes from the rare Ethiopian Gesha variety (also spelled Geisha). Geisha coffee is renowned for its elegant, elongated beans, unique floral aromas, crisp character, and chocolate-infused flavor profile, making it one of the world's most distinctive coffees. This is an exceptionally refined showcase of the Gesha variety developed by specialty coffee exporter and importer Ninety Plus Coffee. Using the honey process, the coffee cherry's outer skin is removed, similar to the wet or "washed" method, but some sticky mucilage is retained on the beans during drying, then mechanically removed along with the parchment.

The Remarkable Journey of Geisha Coffee

In 1931, Geisha coffee made an unremarkable journey from Geisha Mountain in southwestern Ethiopia (coincidentally sharing the same pronunciation as the Japanese word for geisha) to Kenya. It then traveled through Tanzania and Costa Rica before reaching Panama in the 1960s. After nearly half a century of relative obscurity, a serendipitous opportunity arose when the son of Hacienda La Esmeralda's owner, hoping to enter Panama's annual Best Coffee Competition, tested all the coffee varieties on the estate. This brought Geisha into the spotlight, where it made a stunning debut.

From that moment on, Geisha began an unstoppable run, defeating perennial favorites like Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai, and Typica. It swept first place in the Panama National Coffee Cupping Competition for three consecutive years (2005, 2006, and 2007). It went on to compete in various world coffee competitions and has since collected eleven championship trophies. In 2007, Geisha won again at the International Coffee Tasting Championship hosted by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), with auction prices reaching $130 per pound, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for competition coffee. Consequently, the Panama National Coffee Competition was subsequently divided into Geisha and non-Geisha categories to keep Geisha from overshadowing the other varieties.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Honey-processed Geisha like this 90+ Baru Volcano lot is a rare and refined treat, and FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha range lets you trace that same variety from Panama to its Ethiopian birthplace. The Panama Esmeralda Red Label Geisha is grown at 1600-1800 meters, and each lot cups above 90 points and comes from a single plot with its own number. The Green Label Geisha, or Private Collection, blends several plots to express the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha character at a more accessible price.

If you want to compare the source, the Geisha Village Gold Label is a Geisha 1931 lot, while the Geisha Village Red Label is a Gori Gesha lot scoring 88 or above on the SCA scale with full traceability. All of them share the elegant florals, citrus, and tea-like sweetness that this article's blind cupping describes, and all are best enjoyed as a pour-over, where their delicate aromatics come through most clearly.