The Story of Gesha
When I was travelling a lot to the United States for work and spending a lot of time in New York City, I used to treat myself to excellent espresso at Blue Bottle... a coffee company which has very successfully raised funds from venture capitalists and is now majority owned by Nestlé. I quite vividly remember a particular visit to the Blue Bottle in Rockefeller Centre in 2016 as the shop was serving a Yemen Gesha from Port of Mokha. There is so much going on with this specific coffee as a Yemeni-American man named Mokhtar Alkhanshali transported the green coffee beans in a suitcase travelling in a tiny boat after a bombing in Yemen. The coffee at Blue Bottle was light roasted and served exclusively as pour over and it was delicious. It also cost US $16 for that single cup! And that was back in the days well before rampant inflation. Now Gesha coffees are served at up to US $100 per cup (how many exclamation marks am I allowed to use?)!
The story of Gesha is a fascinating one. Gesha (sometimes spelt Geisha) is a variety of Arabica. It's named after the Gesha region of Ethiopia and was largely rediscovered as a commercial coffee crop in 2004 in the Best of Panama coffee competition. That year the Hacienda La Esmeralda farm entered coffee in the competition which blew the judges away. The coffee tasted of jasmine, wildly floral scented with hints of bergamot... an entirely different set of flavours than the judges had expected. Hacienda La Esmeralda has gone on to become one of the world's most valuable coffee farms with auction prices for its green coffees in 2017 coming in at US $601 per pound... that's US $1,324 per kilogram. Several large specialty coffee roasters in the United States have reputedly built up significant stockpiles of the green beans.
Gesha also tends to be the preserve of World Barista Champions. It has been the bean of choice for WBC winners other than Sasa Sestic's (ONA Coffee) famous win in 2015 with a carbonic maceration process Sudan Rumé.
Gesha is incredibly expensive however I do think that serious coffee drinkers should try to experience it at some stage. I have about nine kilograms of green Gesha at the moment. It's not just any Gesha, it's from Colombian superstar coffee farmer Wilton Benitez. The processing of the bean is complex and unique utilising both anaerobic yeast fermentation as well as thermal control methods (referred to as thermo shock) in order to generate the most amazing aromas and flavours.
If you love pour over coffee and would like to try Benitez's Gesha Thermo Shock Finca Paraiso 92 then please let me know! I'll try to work out price and quantity If there are enough wanting to try this amazing coffee.
To learn about filtering espresso click here
To read about new green bean arrivals click here