Esmeralda Farm

Hacienda la Esmeralda, located at an average altitude of 1,600m at the foot of the Baru Volcano in western Panama, is known for producing some of the world's finest coffee beans. The farm has four farms, uses no pesticides, and only hand-picks fully ripe coffee beans, with meticulous care taken in the post-harvest refining and drying process.

Esmeralda Farm is a family-run farm that was acquired by the Peterson family in 1976 as pasture for beef cattle. Most of the land was planted with coffee in 1987, but this was largely due to the approximately 100 years of coffee knowledge and culture that had been cultivated on the surrounding land prior to that.

In the 1990s, when the concept of specialty coffee emerged, the company purchased a farm near Volcano Baru, with its high altitude and rich soil, in order to cultivate superior coffee. The farm was named Jaramillo. The Geisha variety that happened to be planted there transformed the farm dramatically.

After discovering the Geisha variety, the Peterson family began managing their coffee in a way that had never been done before: dividing the farm into small plots and carefully separating the superior lots by processing each plot individually, rather than processing them all at once.
As a result, after Esmeralda Farm's Geisha, which was submitted for auction in 2004, was sold at a record price at the Best of Panama (a Panamanian coffee bean competition), Esmeralda Farm's Geisha beans became famous overnight for their unique aroma and flavor characteristics, and they succeeded in bringing out the individuality of Panamanian coffee, which had previously been said to lack individuality.

Since then, they have continued to break their own records, winning Best of Panama almost every year, and have come to be known as a coffee that is sure to win if submitted. As a result, since 2011, Esmeralda Farm has even held its own special auction. They are now recognized as a farm that commands respect in the Panamanian and global coffee scenes.