Panama is well-known for its coffee, with the mountains around Boquete offering the ideal growing conditions. Last year, Panama grew the most expensive coffee in the world: Geisha.
We joined the tour for Cafe Ruiz, a major coffee producer in Panama. There were maybe 12 people on our tour, and it was drizzly and chilly. We met at the little coffee shop, and rode together to the fields and factory.
I had absolutely no idea how coffee is grown. The coffee fruits, called cherries, are actually red when they're ready to pick (which happens by hand) and the shells are peeled off to reveal the yummy little bean inside. Which is tan/white, of course, as it hasn't been roasted.
We saw some Geisha plants next to some other varieties of coffee plants, and there were far fewer beans per Geisha plant than there were on the other plants -- thereby explaining, at least in part, why it's so much more expensive than other varieties.
After picking, the beans are meticulously sorted (again, by hand) according to color, size, and density. The whole process is incredibly long: if I remember right, there are 12 steps from the plant to your cup -- 13 if you include roasting.
After our time in the field and the factory, we returned to the coffee shop in town, where we smelled a variety of coffees and roasts. I learned that the strength of your coffee has nothing to do with whether it's a dark roast or a light roast (in fact, the light roasts have more caffeine): if you want stronger coffee, just put more coffee in to brew. We then enjoyed a coffee tasting, and were given a bag of Cafe Ruiz coffee to take home with us.
It was such a fascinating tour -- if you want to come visit us, we'll gladly do it again.
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