Panama - Hacienda La Esmeralda Buenos Aires 4NC

The story of Hacienda La Esmeralda helped redefine what Panama Geisha could become. In 1967, the Peterson family began cultivating Geisha for its resistance to coffee leaf rust, only to discover its extraordinary potential when planted at the highest elevations of their Jaramillo farm.

By pioneering the separation of harvests according to altitude and microclimate, the Peterson family revealed how profoundly terroir shapes flavor. Their Jaramillo Geisha set a then-record price at the 2004 Best of Panama auction, ushering in a new era for Panamanian coffee and establishing the country as the benchmark for variety-driven specialty coffee.

More than two decades later, Hacienda La Esmeralda continues to shape coffee history. At the 2025 Best of Panama, the Peterson family swept all three competition categories, earning world-record scores of 98 points in both Geisha Washed and Geisha Natural, alongside 92.88 points in the Varietals category—a testament to their enduring pursuit of excellence.

At Hacienda La Esmeralda, exceptional coffee begins at harvest. Pickers only select perfectly ripe cherries while leaving developing fruit on the tree to mature naturally. And this precise endeavor is supported by wages well above the regional standard, so the harvest team can devote all their care and attention to preserving the integrity of every microlot.

This same precision extends to processing, where cherries are carefully separated by plot, altitude, and microclimate. Each lot undergoes a specially curated process: Washed coffees are depulped and fermented for 24 hours before drying, while natural lots undergo different types of controlled fermentation designed to reveal greater clarity, sweetness, and aromatic complexity.

Each coffee is then slowly dried to the ideal moisture content before resting, milling, sorting, and color grading ahead of export.