Panama Finca Deborah Aether Argon Macerated Washed Gesha
Tastes Like: Orange Blossom, Mandarin, Floral White Wine, Yuzu-Honey Syrup
Origin: Volcán, Chiriquí, Panama
Variety: Gesha
Producer: Jamison Savage
Elevation: 2000 masl
Process: Argon Macerated Washed
Finca Deborah sits above 1,900 meters in the Volcán highlands of Chiriquí, western Panama, one of the highest and most remote coffee farms in the country. Jamison Savage planted it in 2008 under full rainforest canopy, and the farm spends much of the year inside the clouds. The soils are volcanic and nutrient-dense, and nights drop toward 10°C, cold enough to slow the trees' metabolism so the cherries hang longer and load up on sugar while they wait. In October 2025, Jack Simpson used this exact coffee to win the World Barista Championship in Milan. Justin has his own history here: he placed sixth at the 2025 World Brewers Cup with Vivid, Jamison's hybrid carbonic maceration Gesha. Aether is where that work went next. We bought it directly from Jamison.
Orange blossom is there before you sip, a perfumed lift off the dry grounds that carries through the whole cup. Mandarin opens it, sweet and round rather than sharp. Through the middle the cup: floral white wine, aromatic and faintly sweet at the edges, the fermentation showing as perfume rather than as ferment. The finish is yuzu-honey syrup, citrus forward and silky at once, yuzu peel over a sweetness that coats and lingers. A Silky yet effervescent texture, a cup that manages to be weightless and full at the same time. Everything a washed Gesha promises, with the volume turned up and nothing out of place.
Gesha came out of the wild forests of southwestern Ethiopia, but it became the most celebrated variety in coffee on the slopes of western Panama. The trees are slow-growing, low-yielding, and demanding, and their signature florals only develop when maturation is slow. At Finca Deborah they get everything they ask for: extreme elevation, rainforest shade, and cold nights that stretch cherry development to its limit. This is close to the ceiling of what the variety can do. The florals, the structured citrus, the clarity: all of it is the tree responding to a place that refuses to rush it.
Winemakers have long used inert gas to protect wine from oxygen. Carbon dioxide is the common choice, but it dissolves into the liquid, carbonates it, and shifts acidity. Argon is the noble-gas upgrade: heavier than air, barely soluble, completely nonreactive. It blankets the tank and touches nothing. Jamison built his reputation applying the first idea to coffee. Vivid, the coffee we competed with, fermented whole cherries in CO₂-saturated tanks. Aether is the evolution: the CO₂ is replaced with argon, so the fermentation happens under a gas that holds oxygen out without participating at all. Ripe cherries ferment for roughly 50 hours in argon-flushed stainless steel tanks, with temperature and pH monitored throughout, so the microbes work exactly as long as intended and nothing else gets a say. The cherries are then washed and dried slowly on a three-tiered system of shaded raised beds. The result is a washed Gesha with the aromatic intensity of an experimental process and the cleanliness of one where nothing was left to chance.