Geisha (Gesha)

Geisha (also spelled Gesha) originated in Ethiopia's coffee forests and was collected in the 1930s, eventually travelling to Tanzania's Lyamungu research station before arriving in Central America, where it was catalogued at CATIE in Costa Rica in 1953 as accession T2722. It was distributed to farmers across Panama in the 1960s mainly for its rust tolerance, but growers largely ignored it for decades because of its low yield and lanky, hard to manage plant. That changed in 2005, when the Peterson family entered their Hacienda La Esmeralda Geisha into the Best of Panama competition. Its intense jasmine, bergamot and stone fruit character broke records at auction and triggered a worldwide rush to plant Geisha across Central and South America. It remains a low yielding, disease susceptible variety, but it now commands some of the highest prices ever paid for green coffee.