Humble Pie

Gesha coffee [that’s Gesha, not Geisha] is a varietal of arabica coffee that originated in the Gori Gesha forest, Ethiopia. For anyone vaguely familiar with specialty coffee, Gesha is probably best known for being the world's most expensive coffee. In 2005 a Panama Gesha sold for a (then) record price of $770/kg and since has reached even loftier heights. When Gesha was fetching a squillion dollars and winning the hearts of third wave baristas world over, we took a cautious approach. With a healthy dose of cynisism weaved into the fabric of Commonfolk, we’re pretty keen to steer clear of the hype train. We’d tasted our fair share of Gesha and the results ranged from ‘euphoric’ to ‘meh’ so encouraging our producing partners to put all their eggs in one coffee varietal basket seemed pretty risky. Over time we’ve softened our approach, and when we learned that our farming partners Elias Roa and Bellani Sanchez had planted their first commercial lot of Gesha at Finca Tamana we figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a slurp, and boy oh boy did we swallow our pride! The resulting coffee was an eruption of intense aromas of cranberry juice, with vanilla Coke sweetness and a malty assorted biscuit finish. Elias and Bellani have been producing some of Colombia’s best coffee for years. An expert in traditional washed coffees, Elias’s ability to experiment with natural and anaerobic fermentations can fly under the radar and this particular lot of coffee was allowed an extended oxygen deprived fermentation in sealed bags for 48 hours before slowly drying in cherry on raised patios and African style beds. This slow and deliberate fermentation led to the complex intensity of flavour and has made this particular coffee the pick of a very good bunch of microlots sourced from Finca Tamana. If this is the taste of humble pie, pour us another cup! We sourced this coffee directly from our partners Elias and Bellani and imported it with the help of InterAmerica.