LOS CENIZOS

We love this corner of Cerro Punta. The farm sits in a volcanic canyon fed by mountain springs, under ash trees older than anyone working there, and because everything is high and cool the cherries ripen late and slowly. Estela watches the fermentation herself and the team washes and beds the coffee by hand. That care is what we taste in the cup.

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.