Exploring Panama
Read More
The view from Cafe Kotowa: the village of Boquete is below. Clouds from the Atlantic peak over the mountains to the north. We drove through the village and then up into the mountains to Finca Lerida.
The Lerida coffee farm and Eco Lodge. Lerida is a world class destination for bird lovers. The quetzal and other rare birds are found in the forest above the coffee fields.
Lerida has mostly Red Catuai cultivar coffees. Red Catuai is a semi-dwarf Arabica cultivar whose cherries hold firmly to the tree. This is important since during the harvest months Boquete is buffeted by very strong winds. Yellow Catuai (bearing yellow ripe fruit, not red) is avoided because the fruit comes off easily; it is therefore popular in Brazil where many farms use mechanical harvesting. New varieties and cultivars have been added to Lerida recently, including Gesha and Mocha; the latter produces a tiny bean that has an age-old reputation for high quality that has yet to be tested in our modern times, as far as i know.
The farm is gradually replanting all its coffee trees along contours to better preserve the soil. The ossaional unbroken lines of taller trees are windbreakers to protect the coffee plants from the harsh winds that blow down from the north.
Looking down from Lerida farm towards the Boquete Valley far to the upper right.
Looking due east from Lerida. La Esmeralda's Gesha coffee is grown on the mountain slopes in the distance, partially covered with mist and a few clouds.
Lerida gets about 110 - 120 inches of rain per year while La Esmeralda gets 138 - 157 inches, according to John. It rains less at La Esmeralda during the harvest season, however. It is extraordinary how many microclimates there are in the Boquete area.
The wet mill below is about to undergo expansion; thus the rubble, bottom left. The coffee cherries go down the white pipe to the blue depulper and demucilager below. These take off all the fruit from the coffee bean. The beans are then very meticulously mechanically dried, in the structure at right, stopping at night, to allow the moisture in the beans to even out before resuming in the morning. John says that each variety of coffee has a separate drying profile.
A coffee tree nursery is directly below, with glass roofs. Just to the right are three long pens where the spent coffee cherry is turned to mulch, using California red worms http://www.vermiculturemanual.com/en/manual/concepts.html.) A small concrete patio is used for limited sun-drying of beans.
The beans, once dried, are stored in a heavily insulated warehouse to keep bean moisture a s stable as possiblke over the months of storage.
Meet the owner of Finca Lerida, John Collins, He studied food technology at UC Davis. His father bought the farm in 1957. Finca Lerida first started growing coffee in the early 1920's.
The Lerida cupping room. Andres Lopez manages the farm. Here he is setting up a cupping that he and I will do.
Toby Smith, who owns a coffee company in Australia http://www.tobysestate.com.au/), joined us in the cupping.
"Tuscan Village" at 6,000 feet on the way to the Hacienda Lerida Eco-Lodge. Retire and own some coffee trees which are managed for you!
We next visited Hacienda La Esmeralda and Daniel Peterson gave us a tour. He is standing next to a Gesha coffee tree.
The Gesha (also spelled Geisha) variety. The upper branches spring upwards at a 45 degree angle.
This is the leguminous shade tree Leucaena Leucacephala. Its roots go deep, assuring there be no competition with coffee's shallower roots. It is valued for the nutrition it gives the soil, its compatability, and the dappled shade it gives.
One disadvantage is how much Leucaena Leucacephala can reproduce.
This Gesha has a lot of cherries - for Gesha; it is a low producer. Most of the cherries grow in the upper part of the tree (note the angles of the branches).
The distances between Gesha's branches are very wide.
This is the La Esmeralda plot of Gesha coffee trees called Mario, at elevation 5,000 to 5,400 feet. Our current (Feb. 2010) offering of La Esmeralda (2009 crop) is from this plot.
Another view of the Mario plot. You can see th diversity of vegetation here.
A third view of the Mario, La Esmeralda plot.
The moment we passed a ridge higher up in the Mario plot we came to a very windy zone. The foliage was sparse and production dramatically reduced.
Another shot showing the effects of cold and wind.
This leaf shows the effects of severe cold.
Daniel Peterson explaining La Esmeralda's quality control to me, Laurie and a group of Australian coffee buyers.
Daniel Peterson
Tim O'Brien of Cafe Imports, a major US specialty coffee importing company.
Mark Dundon, founder of Seven Seeds Cafe, Carlton, Australia.
Bridget Amor, Mark's partner, of Seven Seeds Cafe.
The La Esmeralda wet mill. In back are two separators (high up) which remove the outer fruit. The beans (seeds) and fruit then pass through a rotary sieve, below, which separates the bulky fruit from the beans. The beans, falling through the sieve, then travel up through a demucilager where turbulence and friction remove the remaining mucilage. The cleansed beans then pass through the white tubes, in front, to be dried.
La Esmeralda is experimenting with many varieties of Arabica which the Petersons are growing on the farm. Each type is being processed and dried separately to later be cupped.
At Finca Elida, another high quality producer - picking orange colored tree tomatoes. See http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/tree_tomato.html
Red tree tomatoes are said to be sweeter.
The other Gesha type had bronze tipped leaves. The cherries of this type matured sooner than those of the green tipped.
Thatcher showed us that there were two types of Gesha plants. The young leaves of one type had bright green tipped leaves.
Coffee blossoms....
The beautiful Elida farm. IT has placed in the top ten coffee in the Best of Panama competition in 2009 and 2008.
Elida Farm in the foreground.The farm goes up to 5,600 feet. Much of it is virgin forest shared with Volcan Baru National Park.
Thatcher Lamastus, in his seventies, drove us to the top of his farm, along the edge of the forest, with spectacular views. He explained to us as we were going up the narrow dirt road that he was partially deaf and could only see with one eye. When we got to the top he stopped and asked for a magnifying glass to see a coffee leaf with hi good eye. Great driver though! Who would have known!
One last view from Finca Elida. Looking north towards the Mario plot of La Esmeralda....
Our last visit was to Francisco Antonio Serracin's and his son, Francisco Jose's Finca Don Pache. The farm is on the sides of a ravine called Callejon Seco which has a unique microclimate with just under 100 inches per year of rain.
Don Francisco explained just how wild the Gesha plant was. Here we see a secondary branch rising vertically , quite common for Gesha, but not so for other Arabica varieties. Gesha is very hard to prune. The plant often reacts poorly and is very hard to shape.
Toby Smith helps illustrate the vertical nature of Finca Don Pache.
Because it rains throughout the year it is common to see some flowering along with ripe cherry.
A departing view early in the morning. Forest dominates above with coffee fields just below at the 5,000 to 6,000 foot level. Fine mist, call bajareque, passes by.
Every degree of ripeness. A partial red cherry is called a pinton.
Because it rains sporadically right through every month, including harvest, every degree of ripeness is to be found on the coffee trees. In Boquete each tree requires twelve or more pickings. Very laborious and expensive!