Panama has set a new global benchmark for coffee prices. A kilogram of the country’s prized Geisha variety sold for 30,204 dollars at the annual Best of Panama auction this week, cementing its status as the world’s most expensive coffee. The record-setting lot of washed Geisha was grown by Hacienda La Esmeralda in the highlands of Boquete, Chiriquí Province and purchased by Julith Coffee, a buyer based in Dubai.
This astronomical price is the culmination of a three-decade transformation of Panama’s coffee industry. From near collapse in the 1990s, a unified group of producers focused on quality and a single, rediscovered coffee variety has propelled the small nation to the pinnacle of the global specialty market. The auction, which lasted approximately twelve hours, involved bids from specialty coffee buyers across the world and serves as the primary annual reference for Panama’s exclusive beans.
“This is not luck,” said Ricardo Koyner, president of the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama. [Translated from Spanish]
Koyner’s statement carries the weight of nearly thirty years of quiet work, experiments, and reinvention. He recalls a time when Panama simply did not exist on the world coffee map. Most producers were on the verge of collapse in 1996, he explained, when coffee was selling for 60 cents per pound while costing 50 cents to harvest. Farmers seriously considered tearing out their coffee plants to grow vegetables instead.
The Union That Saved an Industry
From that desperate scenario emerged an unexpected solution, collaboration. Producers put aside historical rivalries to form the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama. Their shared goal was to give Panama its own name in the world of coffee. This union allowed the industry to rebuild and explore an audacious idea, finding a coffee variety that offered distinctly superior flavors.
That search took years but found its reward in a variety whose name had been misspelled since its arrival in the country half a century earlier. The Geisha coffee variety, originally from Ethiopia, had been growing in Panama for decades with no one suspecting its potential. Competitions organized by the association forced producers to put their best beans forward, creating a cycle of continuous improvement. Each producer who did not win one year returned with new techniques and strategies, transforming the sector from within.
“Everyone is happy when the best coffee wins,” Koyner said. [Translated from Spanish]
He explained that the most rewarding aspect is not the price itself but what it represents, the validation of a collective effort. When one producer wins the crown, he noted, the entire country benefits and the whole industry moves up another step.
The decision to auction competition winners changed everything. Initial auctions were small and intimate. Introducing online bidding opened the process to the world. When Geisha entered the scene, prices skyrocketed, jumping from 8 dollars per kilogram to 60 in a single year before climbing steadily to today’s record figures.
Craftsmanship at High Altitude
Producing an excellent Geisha requires far more than skill. It demands a specific microclimate found only in Panama’s highlands, with cold temperatures above 1,400 meters, balanced rainfall, and mountainous terrain. The climate does half the work, producers say, and the people do the rest. Without harvesters who selectively pick only ripe cherries, quality is impossible.
This highlights one of the Geisha’s lesser-told stories. It stands as one of the agricultural products that most effectively distributes wealth. The economic benefit flows from the Ngäbe harvesters spending long days in the coffee fields to the baristas serving cups in cafes from Dubai to Korea to Japan. Today, over one hundred farms produce Geisha in the Tierras Altas region, all participating in a unique culture that treats coffee like craftsmanship.
Each bean is handpicked, and a single minimal error can ruin months of work. The record price of 30,204 dollars per kilogram for Hacienda La Esmeralda’s lot is not seen as an anomaly but as a testament to this meticulous, collaborative system. It confirms Panama’s hard-won position, proving that a small country can redefine an entire global industry through unity, quality, and the rediscovery of a single extraordinary bean.