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El Salvador

Montecarlos GeshaEducation Lot2023

$14.25
Notes of Honeysuckle, Milk Chocolate, Lemon
The winning combination of the prized gesha variety and the rich volcanic soils of Montecarlos Estate makes for yet another nuanced and delicate cup with this 2024 harvest. Floral qualities reminiscent of honeysuckle and vanilla are present both aromatically and in the cup, accompanied by flavors of creamy milk chocolate and Meyer lemon, as well as a mild plum-like quality that develops as the coffee cools.
Current Lot:

Montecarlos Gesha Education Lot 2024

Every year since the beginning of our partnership in 2017, Passenger has purchased special selections of gesha and pacamara alongside the larger lots we select as our Montecarlos Foundational offering. As each consecutive year has shown, the Batres family continues to find success in producing consistent high-quality representations of these special varieties.

  • Montecarlos
  • Apaneca, El Salvador
  • Gesha
  • Wet Process
  • 1600–1800 masl
  • Notes
    Honeysuckle, Milk Chocolate, Lemon
  • April 30, 2024
  • August 07, 2024
  • Release Date
    January 21, 2025
  • Volume
    1,520 lbs
  • $8.00 /lb
  • $8.39 /lb

The Journey of the Gesha Variety: From Ethiopia’s Wild Coffee Forests to Global Specialty Coffee Fame

Coffee is native to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia, near the South Sudanese border. In the 1930s a seed collecting expedition was commissioned by the Kenyan Director of Agriculture. The wild coffee forests of Ethiopia, being the birthplace of Arabica coffee, are rich in genetic diversity. The purpose of the expedition was to find coffee accessions that were appropriate for cultivation throughout the British Colonies. As cup profile (i.e. flavor) was of little to no consideration at the time, productivity and resistance to disease were the primary considerations when searching for appropriate varieties. As an eventual result of this expedition, coffee from the Gesha region of southwest Ethiopia made its way to Costa Rica via Tanzania and eventually ended up on a farm that came to be owned by the Peterson family in Boquete, Panama: Hacienda La Esmeralda.

Nearly 75 years after that seed collection expedition, the Gesha variety was famously brought into the spotlight during the 2004 Best of Panama competition, where a Gesha variety separation from Esmeralda bewitched the international panel of judges and shattered previous records for the highest price ever paid for coffee at auction. It has remained in said spotlight since, enjoying over 20 years as the world’s preeminent specialty coffee variety.