This year has turned out to be a banner year for Archers’ ties with the peerless coffee people of Panama and our exploration of their irreplicable coffees’ flavor diversity. Let’s look back together at the 2024 milestones that led up to the launch of what we’ve unironically decided to call The Ultimate Panama Coffee Collection.
See how at Archers, thanks to our producing partners, we can always look forward to amazing things in store.
Panama Origin Trip
Straight from the World Brewers Cup Championship in April 2024, our two UAE National Brewer’s Cup Champions and World Brewer’s Cup Semi-Finalists — 2024 champ Frederick Bejo and 2022 David Disuanco — flew to Panama to visit our producing partners.
Along with the grandeur of traveling through the Panama Geisha’s home terroirs came a physically taxing itinerary — traversing remote, high-altitude coffee-growing terrains, touring expansive processing facilities, and back-to-back, day-to-night, daily cuppings.
While the trip was primarily focused on sourcing, it also served as a gesture of respect for the country that helped elevate a humble crop into a socio-culturally valuable, international living artifact—one with the power to uplift livelihoods and enhance the quality of life for every individual and community it touches.
Guest Cupping at the Best of Panama
Early in June 2024, our Frederick Bejo returned to Panama, having received the honor of an invitation to participate in the 2024 Best of Panama as a guest cupper.
Beyond the opportunity to gain better insight into the evolving producing landscape shaped by the strengths of the leading producers and the new areas of discovery among the coffee-growing zones, we also value this prestigious invitation as recognition of the place we've persistently worked hard to reach and keep as committed purveyors of the world's finest coffees.
Visiting Panama twice this year served as Archers’ in-person kudos to a country whose elite league of producers we have always looked up to, aspired to represent, and had finally earned our way to sharing our coffee insights and a space at the cupping table with.
Best of Panama Auction Lot Tasting
For the first time in the UAE, a homegrown roastery opened the invitation to our local community to experience all the 50 Best of Panama Auction Lots at a Private Tasting Premiere here at Archers.
New and old friends joined us to taste the top lots across all three 2024 Best of Panama Competition Categories—14 Varietals, 18 Geisha Natural, and 18 Geisha Washed.
It was where we started to seamlessly weave the best of the Best of Panama mountain tales into our own desert stories right here at home. See the recap and more photos here.
Bidding & Winning: Best of Panama Auction
Archers’ win at the 2024 Best of Panama auction got all the more real and so much sweeter when we finally announced it to our global community.
We got 4 out of the 36 Geisha lots last August 8. Three are from first-time Archers producing partners.
GN-08 from Santa Maria Estate Coffee.
GN-07 from Adaura Coffee.
GW-17 from Mil Cumbres.
One, GN-18, is from among our earliest and most fun-loving producing Kai Janson and Jannette Janson of Janson Coffee, with whom we’ve nurtured one of our longest-running and greatly fulfilling coffee friendships.
While our Frederick Bejo’s wishlist from his stint as a first-time BOP 2024 guest cupper was much longer, it truly, already was beyond a lucky thing that we got the chance to secure these four!
Launching The Ultimate Panama Collection
Chasing coffee excellence since day one, we’re proud, thrilled, & humbled to be here with our greatest collection. No cap.
It’s a hallmark our founders could just dare to dream of and have been working so hard for since the start. Panama’s most renowned pioneers and rising stars, 30+ of them, have entrusted us to represent their legacies, from the well-entrenched to the emergent.
Being granted this privilege of access, at this scale, to these extremely rare and finely differentiated coffees of character is a vote of confidence not just in Archers as a roastery, but in the growing and increasingly discerning community of specialty coffee lovers we first nurtured locally and have only begun to expand worldwide.
It’s always worth repeating that we couldn’t have reached this milestone without you. And while this moment is big, it's really only another start—setting the stage for even more to come.
Enjoy it with us starting now — The Ultimate Panama Coffee Collection.
First drop features Hacienda La Esmeralda, Lerida Coffee Estate, Tierra Blanca, Finca Los Cenizos, Altieri Coffee, Mil Cumbres, Finca Deborah, and Bambito Estate Coffee in extremely limited quantities.
Secure your share here.