Guatemala Finca Linda Vista Gesha

This Crown Jewel from the Rodríguez family of Finca Linda Vista proves that world class gesha has a home in Guatemala! It's full bodied, velvety and slightly complex with notes of pineapple, jasmine, mandarin orange and apricot.

Arrival Date: November 9th, 2021

Acidity & Brightness: Moderately bright, quite sweet

Balance & Finish: Slightly complex, lingering floral and vanilla finish

Body & Texture: Full Body, velvety texture

Flavors: Pineapple, Jasmine, Mandarin Orange, Apricot

Grade: SHB, grown at 1450-1500 masl

Processing: Fully washed, sun dried on raised tables

Grower: Inmer Abel Valladares Rodríguez - Estate: Finca El Pinal y Anexos, Sub-farm: Finca Linda Vista

Region: Jalapa

Varieties: Gesha (Geisha)

Roasting:  Start with a City + or near the end of 1st crack. If you prefer more brightness in the cup, roast lighter or about a minute into 1st crack. Full medium roasts (after 1st crack but before 2nd) will be a bit more mellow. Avoid roasts more than a few seconds into 2nd crack for best results. The expert roasters at Royal Coffee recommend slightly lower temperatures, especially early in the roast, meaning slightly longer drying and maillard times. "Our roasters found this Gesha to respond well to longer drying time and lower end temperatures, but to be fairly easy to manage and repeat profiles predictably."

Reminder: this coffee is raw, you must roast it before brewing

Our Review: "Inmer Abel Valladares Rodríguez was involved with coffee production as a consultant for 20 years prior to managing a farm himself, which he finally did in 1998. El Pinal y Anexos is a 48-hectare estate divided into 12-hectare individual farms, each of which produces and sells under their own name. As a whole, the four single farms are processed centrally and managed by the same 90-110 person team that Inmer oversees each harvest. Finca Linda Vista is one of the sub-farms, and is the source of this gesha lot that we tasted and bought for the first time this year. Since its founding, El Pinal y Anexos has been a family affair, with everyone participating in some way in picking, processing, quality control, drying or storage management. Cherry selection in the field follows a strict Brix meter minimum of 18-20% (a Brix meter is a refractometer for fruit, reading sugar content as a percentage of total liquid tested). After picking, cherry is transported to the estate’s processing site where it is depulped and fermented overnight, and then transferred to one of many segmented spaces on the estate’s patio, or, in the case of special preparations like this lot, dried on raised beds inside a greenhouse for 12-16 days. Tasting this coffee is an utter delight. The gesha cultivar itself may have a strong reputation and a consistent expression when grown in Panama or Colombia, but elsewhere in the Americas it often struggles to fulfill buyers’ expectations in florality, sweetness, or cup structure. Many people plant it, hype it, and many do receive great prices for the pedigree alone. We were extremely impressed by this specimen from Inmer’s farm, and felt it deserved a wide audience as a Guatemala gesha. It is beautiful, subtle, and brings many of the hallmark character we have learned to expect from the cultivar. It is unmistakably a gesha—a rare and successful expression coming from Guatemala, and moreover from a lesser-known department." - Royal Coffee

Gesha, sometimes spelled geisha and always pronounced "geh-sha" (not "gey-sha"), has a bit of a Cinderella story. The cultivar was originally discovered in Ethiopia's Gori Gesha forest in the 1930s. In the 1960s the Panamanian government went looking for new coffee varieties to help its farmers stand out in the International market and after purchasing some gesha plants along with a few other varieties, they distributed them to farmers in the Boquete region of Panama. But it wasn't until 2004 that a gesha coffee caught the attention of a international jury of expert judges at the Best of Panama competition. You see, they thought they were mistakenly given an Ethiopian coffee! After Hacienda la Esmeralda confirmed they had indeed grown the coffee at their estate in Boquete, Panama, they were awarded 1st place and gesha quickly went from a relatively unknown cultivar to the jewel of the specialty coffee world.

Once it became clear there was a high demand for this rare variety, gesha branched out from Boquete and by the 2010s its now expertly grown in nearby Colombia and Guatemala. While Panamanian geshas seem to get all the praise, the farmers in Colombia and Guatemala have begun to catch up and are producing world class geshas. It's clear the Rodríguez family intends to compete at this level, in fact, Royal Coffee was so impressed with their offering they made it a Crown Jewel! It's slightly complex, subtly bright and velvety with a lingering, floral finish. Look for notes of pineapple, jasmine, mandarin orange and apricot. Some cuppers also noted lemoncello, lilac and green grape.