Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda Buenos Aires 4 FC Gesha
Tastes Like: Green Pear, Mandarin Orange, White Grapes, Lemongrass
Origin: Boquete , Chiriquí, Panama
Variety: Gesha
Producer: Hacienda La Esmeralda, Peterson Family
Elevation: 1700 masl
Process: Washed
Hacienda La Esmeralda sits in Palmira, Boquete, in the Chiriquí highlands of western Panama. The Petersons bought it in 1967 and added the Jaramillo land in 1997 for its altitude. Buenos Aires is a 30 hectare plot on that ground at 1,700 meters and above, planted with trees that now average 13 years old, where cloud sits through the afternoon and the cherries ripen slowly. It was picked on 12 March 2026. At the 2025 Best of Panama, Esmeralda scored 98.00 points in washed Gesha and 97.00 in natural, both world records. We bought it directly from the Petersons.
Lemongrass is there on the opening, a green, citric aroma that follows into the cup. Green pear opens the flavor, crisp and lightly sweet. Mandarin orange fills the middle, round and juicy. White grape carries the finish, which runs long and clean. The texture is silky and the body is light. This is a cup built on precision, and every note in it sits in focus.
Gesha was collected in southwestern Ethiopia in 1936 and reached Panama in the 1960s, brought in for its tolerance of leaf rust. The trees yielded badly, so farms planted them along borders and left them there. In the 1990s Daniel Peterson noticed those trees shrugging off rust on the high sections of Jaramillo, and the family planted more of them higher up. In 2004 they separated the harvest by area, entered the lot picked above 1,650 meters, and won the Best of Panama, selling at auction for $21 a pound, a record price at the time. Everything that followed came out of that lot, and at the 2025 auction a washed Gesha from this same farm sold for $13,705 a pound. Buenos Aires sits on that ground.
FC is Esmeralda's code for cold fermented washed with climate controlled drying. Cherries are picked at their ripest and depulped, then fermented in stainless steel tanks held at 16°C for 96 hours. The cold slows the microbes, so a fermentation that finishes in 24 hours at ambient temperature runs four days here, and the aromatics build gradually. The parchment then dries for 21 days on raised beds in an indoor facility where airflow, temperature and humidity are held constant. Both ends of this process are slow on purpose, and the florals arrive intact.