Introduction to Famous Panama Coffee Estates - The Legendary Duncan Estate

FrontStreet Coffee - Introduction to Panama Duncan Estate

Panama's renowned coffee estate, Kotowa Estate, is located in the Boquete region of Panama. Surrounded by mountains with beautiful volcanoes, most areas remain undeveloped, featuring a slightly cooler climate and exceptionally beautiful scenery. In the local indigenous language, "Kotowa" means "mountains," and the estate is situated among these mountains at an average altitude of 1700-1850 meters.

The estate's founder, Alexander Duncan MacIntyre, originally from Canada, held an important political position in his hometown but harbored a strong desire for change from his busy and active life. One day in 1918, he read a report about Boquete, Panama. The report described a mysterious paradise beside volcanic slopes that remained cool year-round. Driven by curiosity, he traveled to Boquete.

Unexpectedly, he fell in love with the local people and the dreamlike valleys of Boquete, so Alexander Duncan MacIntyre decided to settle here. Now, four generations of the Alexander family have been cultivating coffee here using traditional methods, taking pride in their carefully grown specialty coffee.

Ricardo Koyner

The estate is currently managed by the third-generation owner, Ricardo Koyner. Under his careful management, the estate maintains strong social and environmental awareness. To ensure a clean, safe, and sustainable environment, during the harvest season, Kotowa Estate selects fully ripe coffee cherries and processes them using the local clear, cool mountain spring water. With environmental consciousness, they use only half a liter of water per pound of coffee, saving approximately 10-20 liters compared to other processing plants.

The processed pulp and wastewater are reused as organic fertilizer. Finally, at 1700 meters altitude in a cool, dry climate, the coffee beans slowly dry naturally. The estate combines traditional concepts with the latest technology for coffee cultivation and processing, and has specially preserved 500 hectares of original forest as a wildlife sanctuary.

Kotowa Estate has won numerous awards. In the 2012 Best of Panama National Coffee Competition, it won both the natural process category and the traditional variety category championship. In 2014, it further achieved excellence with five winning batches, enjoying a period of remarkable prominence.

The estate primarily has four cultivation areas: Finca Kotowa DUNCAN, Finca Kotowa DON K, Finca Kotowa RíO CRISTAL, and Finca Kotowa TRADICIONAL. In recent years, another cultivation area, Finca Kotowa LAS BRUJAS, has been added, which has performed exceptionally well in the Best of Panama competitions.

Among these, Duncan Estate faces the distant Pacific Ocean, where warm, humid winds blow across the steep mountain ridges, creating diverse microclimates. Continuing upward from Duncan Estate leads directly to Baru Volcano, where the altitude exceeds 1700 meters with strong winds. The estate features numerous giant coniferous trees over two hundred years old, and its cultivation history dates back to 1900, beginning during Ricardo's grandfather's era.

In Summary

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