Boquete’s Geisha Coffee Sets Record at Private Auction: 13,518 Dollars per Kilogram

Panama’s luxury Geisha coffee set a new world record at a private auction on Thursday, when producers Lamastus Family Estate sold one of its lots for $13,518 per kilogram ($110.50 per cup), which was purchased by a South Korean company.

“This lot is small, but extremely delicious. A coffee that has a cup profile that I have not found anywhere else in the world. A coffee that was harvested ripe, with a Honey process, dried in a dark room and we obtained a result in that cup, extremely excellent,” says Wilford Lamastus, owner of Lamastus Family Estate; the same producer who imposed the highest price in the recent public electronic auction of the ‘Best of Panama (BOP)’.

Lamastus explained that the 3-kilogram batch of Aguacatillo Elida Geisha Honey, acquired by Korean company Black Road Coffee, was grown at an altitude of 2,060 meters in the town of Boquete, in the Panamanian province of Chiriquí, 500 kilometers from the capital of Panama.

In 2022, a batch came from this same place that managed to reach, in the electronic auction at that time, 13,286 dollars per kilogram.

“One of the important strengths of this auction was to design a theme, and this year it is the kaleidoscope that shows coffee in different shapes, forms and colors; it offers that variety of flavors and unique characteristics of each lot and its process,” said Lamastus.

“The primary ones are the traditional washed coffees that are highly sought after, they are the coffees where the only thing you are tasting are the intrinsic flavours of the Geisha variety and the terroir. We did other processes. We fermented it in tanks without any type of control, which correspond to the abstract and symmetrical ones, which were very well controlled processes in their fermentation,” added Lamastus.

The successful results of the three electronic auctions in Panama reaffirm the country’s brand, said Hunter Tedman, president of the Panama Specialty Coffee Association, after indicating that the preference is not only for the ‘Best of Panama’ coffees, but that these very high prices are repeated just a few days after one auction is held after another.

“This makes us all happy, because it continues to strengthen Panama’s position in the world and the Panama-Geisha brand, which makes us all feel very good,” Tedman said.

At the recent BOP 2024 electronic auction, Lamastus Family managed to set a world record by selling the Elida Geisha Natural Torre lot for $10,013 per kilogram, a price that was surpassed at this private electronic auction.

Buyers from China, the United States, Australia, Japan, Canada, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan participated in the auction.