Here is where the Best for 2013 comes from.   Hacienda La Esmeralda Special in Jaramillo

This year the prime variety grown by my friends, the Peterson family high up in Jaramillo topped $350 per pound at auction!!

Price Peterson tells the story of the coffee and the farm where it grows:

“In 1996 we bought a coffee farm in Boquete, in the area known as Jaramillo. We had known for some time that the farm had good altitude (1450 to 1700 meters) and a nice slightly orange cup. It was an old farm with an interesting collection of coffee varieties planted by various owners over the years. We increased the plantings to about 60 hectares (part had been converted to a dairy) and basically ‘overhauled’ the farm. Much of the newer plantings did not come into production until the 03/04 harvest.

During the year 2002 it occurred to my son, Daniel, that perhaps the cup of this farm was not due to an overall goodness, but rather perhaps there was one area that was producing an exceptional cup and, when mixed together with the rest of the production, a generally ‘good’ cup resulted. He tested this notion by cupping coffees from all over the farm. Sure enough, there was one small valley at the high end of the farm which produced the extraordinary cup now known as ‘Esmeralda Special’ – and which was the coffee that sold at the extraordinary price. The coffee on the remainder of the farm remains quite good, but not the really knock-your-socks-off cup of the Esmeralda Special.

Price, Rachel and Daniel Peterson

The Peterson Clan

The Family

Rudolph A. Peterson

In November of 1967, a Swedish born Californian banker by the name of Rudolph A. Peterson (1904-2003) purchased Hacienda La Esmeralda, a farm which at that time comprised several hundred hectares in the area of Palmira, as well as a property in Cañas Verdes. Rudolph purchased this land with the intention of eventually retiring there, although at the time he was president of the Bank of America.

Rachel, Susan, Price and Daniel Peterson

The farm was founded 40 years previously by Hans Elliot, another Swede, who constructed the farmhouse which is the current residence of the Peterson family. During the first years after the purchase, Rudolph would visit the Hacienda every couple of months, however, in 1970 he became director of Development for the United Nations, and as his obligations abroad grew, he found less time to visit the farm. Many years before, as a young man studying at Berkeley, Rudy, as he was known by many, had met and married Patricia Price. They had two children: Linnea and Price.

Price Peterson, son of Rudolph A. Peterson, was born in California in 1936, received a bachelor’s degree at Pomona College, and a doctorate degree in neurochemistry from U. Penn in 1961. In 1965 he married Susan Duff (born in Philadelphia in 1941) while working as a professor of anatomy at U. Penn.

In 1973 Price took over the Hacienda administration from his father and moved to Panama along with his wife Susan and his children: Erik, born in Philadelphia in 1966; and Rachel, born in Sweden in 1967. Their third child, Daniel, was born in Panama in 1974.

The Next Generation: Clockwise from back Alexandra and Gabriel Engfer (Rachel’s children), Nicholas and Isabella Peterson (Erik’s children).

Upon arriving in Panama, Price introduced dairy cattle to the farm and opened the first milk parlor. To date, there are four milk parlors in different areas of the farm. Although there was always coffee on the farm, it was in 1987 that major portions of land were planted with coffee trees, and in 1994 a Beneficio (coffee processing plant) was added in order to process all the coffee on the farm itself.

In 1996, all the members of the Peterson clan (including our patriarch Rudy) and one of Linnea’s children (Merrill Bennett, alias “el primo Mario”) joined forces to purchase another farm in the area of Jaramillo, Boquete, later named Pequeña Suecia (Little Sweden) but referred to as Esmeralda Jaramillo. It was on a section of this farm that the famous Esmeralda Special trees were discovered.

The Auction

SOME 44 international buyers, from 10 countries  signed up for ‘The Best of Panama’ coffee auction held on June 11 in Boquete.

The on line auction had first time bidders from Korea and France, and new companies in Australia and Taiwan.

The countries involved were from Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Republic of Korea, France, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Australia and the United States. The Specialty Coffee Association of Panama (SCAP), sent each bidder samples of each batch for testing . SCAP president Plinio Ruiz Hijo , said he felt very satisfied with the increased interest in the best coffee in Panama by the international market. 15 boxes of coffee samples were sent to Taiwan alone.  14,600 pounds (6636.4 kg) of specialty coffee in 47 lots was auctioned.  The coffee growing participants were the 24 lots that were the finalists at the XVII International coffee tasting event in Boquete of of Geishas natural and traditional coffees. Also entered in the auction were 23 lots that scored 84-87 points in the tasting,   In 2004, when the first Geisha variety was auctioned, most buyers were from the U.S. and Japan. The lowest bid for a pound of coffee $1 .26 and the highest price $ 21.    In 2012, the lowest price per pound was $7.75 and the highest was $93.25 showing an increase in eight years of 615% on the lowest price and 444% on the highest.

This year the block buster coffee from Hacienda Esmeralda went off the charts at $350 for the top lot sold at auction making history.  Here are the final results.