Michael Butterworth cofounder of the Coffee Compass did an interview of Keith Pech who is a coffee grower here in Boquete.
Earlier this year we traveled to Boquete, Panama for the Best of Panama competition. While we were there we met a remarkable young coffee farmer named Keith Pech, who manages his family’s farm Damarli Estate. He was kind enough to host us on his farm, serve us some delicious coffee blossom tea, and teach us about the unique microclimate that makes coffees from Boquete some of the most sort-after coffee in the world. Whether it’s his background as a professional ping pong player or his experience working for a négociant in Bordeaux, France, Pech is an exceptional person that we knew we had to interview.
You grew up near Cleveland, but now you run a coffee farm. How did that happen?
Yes I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and lived there until I was 22 years old. My father is American and my mother is Panamanian. So I have always been spending time in Panama since I was a child, basically every year during my summers for usually between 3 weeks to 2 months. On my mothers side coffee has been in the family since the late 1800s and when I became interested in coffee it made me the 5th generation in coffee.
My Panamanian grandfather, Plinio Ruiz, was the founder of Casa Ruiz SA and the Panamanian Coffee brand Cafe Ruiz. He became with the help of the whole family (my grandmother, my two uncles, my aunt and my mother) the largest exporter of coffee in Boquete (at one time over 100 containers per year) and was one of the largest roasters in all of Panama with presence in many major supermarkets.
My American father, David Pech, basically married into a coffee family and was given the opportunity to purchase a farm in Boquete. My father thought it was a good idea so he too joined the coffee business in 1996. He named the farm Damari after the initial investors -DA for David, MA for Manfred (his father), R for Ruth (his mother) and LI for Lia (his wife) Damarli was taken care of by the Ruiz family until 2014, when I had finished college in the US and I decided I was more passionate about coffee than the other opportunities that were available. Thus, I moved down to Panama and became a full time coffee farm manager at Damarli Estate.