FINCA SOPHIA

Finca Sophia grows at the very edge of where coffee will still ripen, high in the misty highlands of Nueva Suiza above Volcán. It was founded in 2008 by Willem Boot with Helen Russell and David Pohl, who set out to test the limits of Geisha at extreme elevation. What was once a rugged cattle and vegetable plot has been replanted with native shade and Geisha, and today it stands among the highest and most exacting farms in Panama, a repeat Best of Panama winner whose lots have set world auction records. At beyond two thousand metres the cherry ripens painfully slowly, and that patience is where the farm's extraordinary clarity comes from.

Geisha, also spelled Gesha, traces its roots to the forests of southwestern Ethiopia, where the original seed was collected in the middle of the twentieth century before travelling through research collections in Central America. For decades it was little more than a curiosity, until growers working at high altitude discovered how extraordinary it could taste. At its best it is unmistakable, with intense florality, a delicate tea like quality, bright citrus, and tropical fruit. The plants are slender and shy to yield and offer little disease resistance, so Geisha is demanding to grow and slow to crop, which is exactly why truly great examples stay rare and so highly prized.

The washed process is the cleanest and most precise way to prepare coffee, and the one that lets a single origin and variety speak most clearly. Every trace of fruit and sticky mucilage is stripped away before the bean is dried, usually by fermenting it loose in tanks and rinsing it off with water, or by scrubbing it away mechanically. Because no fruit is left touching the bean as it dries, nothing masks the raw character of the coffee itself. That is why the washed method is trusted for the finest lots, showing off clarity, bright lively acidity, and the clear stamp of where the coffee was grown.