"Upon grounding the coffee has an elegant fragrance of strawberry, blueberry, peach and floral aroma. At first sip, you can feel the classic geisha flavour. The main notes is peach, strawberry followed by bergamot, fresh blueberry, with floral aroma. The coffee is delicate and sweet."
Coffee is an old comodity, but the way tasting is done; it describe and thinking about the product; as if its a completely different product. Over time, there are many ways of processing coffee. Nowadays, the experimental coffee processing has enabled brewers or drinkers widen its sensory and being able to describe a coffee in a certain ways based on their palate experience.
Geisha variety on its own is known for its unique and complex flavour profile. It can be delicate with notes of floral, fruity and tea like charactheristic. It has been a while since we tasted the classic Panama geisha the last we had one was the Geisha from Hacienda Esmeralda. This one really nailed it.
Berlina estate was founded back in 1920s in a small town of los Narajos in Boquete. It covers an arear about 100 hectares. The highest elevation is around 1800 and the lowest is 1600 masl. There the main variety planted is Typica and Geisha. The farm is currently managed by Don Clemente Vega, and in the Best of Panama 2022, its scroed 91.75 points for its Geisha. This coffee farm is now part of the Casa Ruiz, which is owned by Plinio Ruiz with his Family.
Don Clemente Vega has vast experience in specialty coffee management. Previously he has helped Elida Estate, Auromar Estate, Bambito Estate in the previous Best of Panama. He is also currently the Jason Family Coffee Quality Control Manager.
As the manager of the farm for processing, Don Vega emphasize on the following criteria and to ensure high quality output. They are, the vital role of Cherry Picking, The importance of the timing of picking, the age of coffee tree and altitude factor. In order to decide on which processing works best, these 4 factors plays a very important role in creating a profile for the coffee. During the peak of the harvest, there will be around 300 cherry picker working at the farm to ensure the precised picking for all the coffee at the farm. Once the cherry that was pick during that day was pick, it will be process accordingly and a processing profile is created for a specific lot of processing.
What we have here is a natural process geisha. Upon picking, the cherry will be sorted on the same day. Since coffee is carefully sorted during picking, the use of water has is minimized. The pick cherry is clean with spring water near by but not fermented over a period of time. In the first few days, the cherry is dried on patio before it is transfered into African beds until it reach 12% moisture level. The dried cherry is rested in a warehouse for 5 weeks before it is hulled. Coffee is then sorted manually before it is graded. High scoring cup is then vacuum packed and boxed ready for export.
Variety : Geisha
Altitude : 1650 masl
Process : Natural
Origin : Boquete