Inspiration and Legacy in Coffee

If you could start with your name, what you do for work, and where you live. My name is Wolf Lamastus. I'm the manager of the Lamastus family estates, including Elita, El Burro, and a couple of other farms. I live in Boquete here in Altoquiel Boquete. Beautiful, beautiful place to live. What a what an absolute privilege. Tell me, what does it mean to be the manager of a coffee farm? Well, you know, it's uh something that is very fulfilling it's very nice you are in the forest many times within the coffee plantation people picking coffee, you go around and you see your plantations that they are doing very well. So it's very fulfilling. You get a passion for it afterwards. You see the soil, you see the nature. So it's it's very passionate, very uh something fulfilling, I would call it. Every day is a beautiful day. Every day is a w beautiful day, even if it is raining. Uh tell me a little bit about coffee in Panama. Panama is a very special country. There's a lot of amazing things going on and a multitude of different factors. From your eyes, what makes Panama so special? Well, Panama, uh, as far as uh growing coffee , o Okaykay., um there are two different things, coffee growing and also the you know the coffee uh shops, roasters, whatever. So as far as coffee growing, I think that what makes Panama special is our terroir, our elevation , which is part of the terroir, the soils, volcanic soils, the microclimate, and the biodiversity. I think that those four components are what we need as coffee growers to have amazing, in our case, gaisha let's say uh because uh we don't have that many good you know flora varieties we have got toi we have some typica but uh as far as geisha in and the terroir is what I think that makes our coffee so special yes. I like that answer. Can you just describe to me or define terroir? Well terroir is, you know is something that is very wide. So many people describe it different ways. So terroir is the word that we copy from from uh France, you know. And we use it in especially in my case to describe all the conditions , natural conditions, where the coffee is grown. All the natural conditions, like very high elevation, the higher you are, the better the cup of coffee. The microclimates change thing here in Panama, especially in a short distance, you will have a totally, totally different cup profile , even if you have the same variety, the same process, the same elevation, the same cultural practices because we we have uh what i call five geisha states three main different totally different terrors for example the northernmost coffee farm of Boquete , we have it. We are the northernmost coffee farm of Boquete, not of Panama. And we have the southernmost coffee farm of Boquete on this side of the Varu Volcano. Okay, the Varu Volcano starts in the mountain range and goes south. Okay . So uh in this side of the Varu Volcano we have the two extremes , and then we have Elida, which is a bit closer to the mountain range, and then we have Trompo, which is a few kilometers in a in a straight line, like ground distance from a lida to a trumpo. I can see a trumpo from here. Okay . Uh it's three kilometers and it's a totally cup profile . Uh I know because I have a neighbor who has geisha there too. And from here to uh Luito on the mountain range, it is incredibly different in also three and a half kilometers in El Burro, and no el microclimate, everything in a short, very short distance. During the dry season, which is now we have the what we call Baharecke. What is the Bahare que? So we have two phenomena when the winter starts. Remember, we are a bit north, I mean we are eight degrees, eight plus degrees north. So we are in the northern hemisph ere. So when you have the cold fronts coming down from the winter in the northern hemisphere, the east coast of the United States is straight up. So when you have those wild like storms in New York, Boston, and do you see that they have snowstorms? That cold front comes here and then they mix with uh warm Pacific Air , and then you have two phenomena created: winds, all the way to the Pacific. Winds in Elburo, in trompo like crazy, winds, and then you have another phenomenon which is condensation because the dew point is rich because of the difference in temperature and humidity between the Pacific and the Caribbean. And the mountain range is like the barrier. So the main mountain range does its job and then we have the precipitation, but only so far south from the mountain range. The mountain range divides the country in half, not really, it's more towards the Caribbean, then the Pacific, so from the top of the mountain range to the Caribbean is probab ly 35-40 kilometers, and from here to and from there to the Pacific is 50 kilometers. So you have precipitation that falls so far south . In Luito, Lulo , all the time, non-stop. In Elida we get a lot, all the afternoon mist, that's why we have all our beds on the plastic coat En trompo , very very little, almost nothing. En el búlho nothing. Do not fall in a burrow. Okay. So what happens? You have different species of you know insects like butterflies, different species of uh fungis in the two microclimates growing different species of uh anything else like pl ants, you know, uh fung is , uh different species of birds, of forest, they are different species because one can grow when there is lack of water and the other one is very happy when you have a lot of water. So right there totally different microclimates in less than 10 kilometers ground distance. So that's basically the microclimates, all this combination of factors. So if I understand correctly, Bajareke is a phenomenon from the Caribbean winds meeting with the Pacific winds and and sort of happens in the northern points of Bo quete and then diminishes as we go further south. Exactly. You got it totally right. Okay, interesting. And do do you have a a general idea of what that would do to a geisha cup profile between the different different farms, or is that something that's too hard to define it is not hard to define because they cup differently you have some you know crop cup attributes or descriptors from one let's take the two extremes from uh the Lito Lulo in the Caribbean brain one man range and then the Pacific facing elburro, they cope differently. Although you might give 90 points to each one, they are different. It's like two different code profiles. You can tell by you you being a judge in the base of Panama that the profile from the area of uh Nueva Suiza Cerro Punta Bambito, that are F añas Verdes and the copropile from Cañas Verdes is different than the coprofile from Elida, for example. And even if you take one sample from Cañas Verde, one from Nueva Suiza, and one from this area Alto Kiel at the same elevation they will taste they will cup differently, different attributes. But as far as the score, they might be the same score. Sure. But you will find three different cup profiles. And to you that that's's because of the terwar. It's because of the terroir specifically the microclimates that creates, you know, different type of whatever bacteria, microorganismos, yeast in the atmosphere. Right. We're doing a story. Scap is doing a study. On Saturday we had the the doctor, Dr. Mehia, taking from the , you know, the fruits, taking the minimal you know, samples with the cotton cute tip to analyze what is growing here in this area on top of the uh of the coffee foods. Wow. That's about genetics. How does genetics play into terroir ? Are those in the same bracket or are those different look uh cole as far as those technical questions . I have I am not the right person to ask because I don't know, I just see the presentation, I just see whatever all the uh coffee girls that you have already uh met and interview like Pocho, Graciano, Ricardo, they are more very much into the s scientific part. Even Hunter, uh, he's more into the scientific part because that's more or less more or less their field. So we have a technical committee. I'm not part of the technical committee, but they do the analysis in our farms. Okay. As far as uh the microorganisms, there are two different things. One is taking a a leaf from a tree, gauge a tree or a or a fruit or a seed, send ing it to the lab, genetics, like DNA. Okay. The other one is taking from around the fruit, taking what is on top of that fruit to see what if that is contributing to the flavor of the of the coffee. So we will see when they finish the project . Can you share with us a little bit about the study? You you mentioned something to me. I don't know if you're comfortable sharing that on camera, but you mentioned your results specifically to me this morning from the genetic testing. Yes, the DNA that we did , that we have done it a few times already in the World Coffee Research Lab, DR2 . So we have been doing this. We have been years back taking leaves, okay, and taking fruits from the same tree, sending them to labs, to a lab. This year we the technical committee did uh also a story. And of course, we have been you know cleaning up our geisha farms in the sense that when we send the the leaves to the lab , all ten trees that we talked that they were geisha. Somebody won got lived from ten different trees and Tor elot de Were all Geisha and why? I tell you why . We have been doing nurses for many, many years. Whatever, 40 years, I don't know. Then Geisha, when Geisha started, we started doing nurseries, and then in the nursery you see oh look green and bronze uh at before bronze tip nobody knew about geyser in fact people at 1000 meters 100 1 100 meters . We're planting geisha. When geisha was discovered, nobody knew how that geisha would taste three, four, five, six, seven years later. Nowadays you can find geisha below 400 meters, 1400 meters, 1300 meters. So then on the other side, you have so many , you know, different types of geisha, green tip, bronze tip , nano, like uh purple color, fruit, whatever. So when we were doing the the when we started doing geisha uh nurseries. We had a lot of green tea and we went and planted it together with a lot of bronze tea. Planted them in the field as if they were the same. Then later on we started like copping the geisha separate from bronze between bronze and green . So we saw a difference . And the difference was noticeable . And the difference was that the green tip was a bit, you know, better than the bronze tip . It's like you copying a geisha that has no reposo, no resting . To make it easy to under stand, the bronze is like, oh, it likes resting. No, it is not. It 's the same, you know, repositor than the green, but it's a bronze. So then we eliminated all the bronze from Elida, all of it. And then we took a sp ot to collect the seeds that we do the nurseries. So we do nurseries every year and we haven't stopped doing nurseries. Now we do only geisha, we don't do katway anymore. And we also sell seeds all over the world. And we have managed to , after years, it's not, it was not the first year or the second or the third year, because the third year you saw the plant in the field, you go out in the field, grab from a green tipped geisha , and then in the nursery, when the tree started coming up, you see, oh, this is bronze . Okay, so this is bronze. And there are many reasons why it could be bronze. You know, generations ago, a combination, and now it shows . Like if you have uh a grandmother that was uh whatever another race, maybe you will have a kid with another race. I think my red hair is a good example of of this. Something like Viking, right? Yeah. Yeah. So see your Viking generation that uh in 177 2, something like that, it shows now. Right. Okay, so same with the geis . Also , that you know that this is of course something there is we talk about this all the time, a bit of cross-pollination. So cross-pollination , and then let's say it's very low cross pollination. Some people say 5% , some other 10%. I have heard numbers even of 15% cost pollination. So if a geysa tree flowers open and then you have a katwai open , then you will have that fruit will be a katwai . And then you planted because you harvested that fourth seed, you planted, and then you have a mix. You know what I mean? So the part about having a very clean area where we grow geisha, we have a program . And our people know they are trained to elimin ate the trees that are not geisha. If they see a tree that is not geisha or few trees, they harvest it separated , they mark it and they cut it right away after they harvest the tree. So it will not be among the other geisha. So that takes time, that takes effort that tak,es , you know, training people , that takes many things that we have managed to, you know, to do it right. Of course, I'm not gonna tell you that w we have many hectares of coffee. In between this one and El Burrough, over a hundred hectares of coffee. If you have uh five percent, that's a lot of coffee too. That's five hectares, the size of any small farm, you know, of non -100% uh green-tipped geis, which is the one that we prefer. Maybe other people prefer the bronze tip geisha. Maybe other prefer the combination in the geisha and the elevation with that combination, give you a better cup? And it probably does. I am you know in coffee, you have been in coffee, you have been cupping quite a bit of coffee from Panama. Sometimes you are surprised that let's say you cop a coffee from a different terroir , 2000 plus meter, that you have never caught before coffee from there. And then it that coffee is geisha 70% in Bourbon. And then you say, wow, this geisha tastes like no other coffee that I have tasted before. That is also possible. And that be could be a winner in the BOP, you know. You never know. Or it could be a preferred lot for many bias because they are they want to change a little bit the profile. So many things go on. As a geisha producer, you produce what 80% by volume in geisha or uh less than no by volume last year we did like a bit more than 50 60 percent geisha by volume and 40 percent cut away. Okay. How important is it that your geisha is as close to pure geisha as possible? It's very important because if I uh if you buy geisha from me, it has to be geisha, you know, and we we are probably very sure that it's a geisha. Right. Ninety plus percent sure that it's a geisha. Right. Because that's your intellectual property in many ways, right? You know, interesting things that have gone on. Even us we have had uh visits of people who do uh the in vitro, okay, okay. And then what you can do is you can give one One uh part of your geisha that you want, and they will reproduce it in between a lab. Okay. And they will all be exactly the same. This is cloning. Like cloning, yes. Yeah. And then there is a lab in um in Santiago, which is a city here in Panama, that does that. They have been doing it for you know for forest, forestries. They have offered the service to us, to many growers here, a lot of growers here, they have had the quotes from them, but it's very expensive. So what we do is so we harvest from this lot , we check the seeds, okay? Ah yeah . So it looks like a geisha seat. Then we plant it in the ground. Then the tree comes out. Then we see the tree. Oh, it's a geisha. The nursery that you saw today I bet that at least five percent is not one hundred percent pure let's not call it green g green tip t twenty seven twenty two which is the Panama Green Tea Gauja. T2722, probably there is , I don't know, at least two or three, maybe five percent of non-T 2722 in that noise , but my guy is trained, my technician is trained, okay. Get rid of that, get rid of that, get rid of that. Even if you get rid of one that is T27, 22, but it doesn't look that's okay. We do plenty in order for us to have 100% pure gasia. Because four years from now, five years from now, when we're harvesting that coffee, hey, why did we plant this? We could have eliminated this and we could have saved four or five years of uh you know time. Right. Or when I send the seeds all over the world. I need to make sure that that lot , which is the lot where we get the seed from, is at least 90% pure T2722, because that's what people also want. As far as seeds. What what is geisha? For somebody that that is not familiar, how do you describe geisha to them? Well for I will describe geisha as a very sophisticated beverage that anybody who can who tries the geisha two or three times will change the way they think about coffee because it's a combination of a very good coffee with very sweet and aromatics and all the different flavors, delicate flavors that maybe a very high-end tea can have with coffee. So it's a very high-end beverage that is non-alcoholic, maybe even better than one of those whatever French wines that people say, wow what this wine is better than that because it's something that is so impressive to the taste that anybody would, you know good taste will enjoy it. You know, it's like enjoyable. Something, some a beverage that you cannot stop drinking that beverage every day if you drink it once. I'm sold, man. I want a cup. That was a great description. That was very nice. Tell me, take take geisha. You've got your five different different farms, different terroirs. Why is that important to you from the perspective of a coffee producer to have different terroirs. Okay . Let's put it this way . A call . Yes, the different terroirs are very important, but my different terroirs is not because I chose to choose different terroirs . It was by luck you can say. So we have like the two main farms at Burrough that we have had for 100 years, let's say, and a lida. And then somebody offers me a farm in a different terroir . Very good, nice farm, very good terroir, very good elevation, elevation. And it goes that's a little lulot over 2,000 meters at a price that I can afford. So a different terror . Then somebody else offered me another farm, hey, I need to sell this farm, whatever you want to buy it from me. So what is the price? The price is so much. So I say, wow , I like it, I like it. And he's a different tour. It's not because I went and I said, okay, I want to do different terrain. So it was pure luck based on you know on what I can afford. Okay. Because there are many farms that they they offer farms in different territoirs and but too high a price for me that I cannot afford. So but then the other study is wow I'm lucky I'm lucky so I am going to buy it. It's in a different terror, it's a good price. And so it's amazing for me to have different options for the clients like you, for example. Sure. That you sell all over the world. I had the uh the Filipino that is competing with my Burrogation Natural Lot sixteen that bought it from you. You know that he's competing in the in the Barista Championship of uh of Filipina. Uh his name is Aaron. A,aron, A Araronon. Ah, okay . You sold him that lot . I've sold I've sold some coffee to the Philippines. I've definitely sold some Ubura. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's uh he's enjoying that coffee. Every day I it's he's probably like a twenty-one years old kid that every day he's texting me right about the coffee, the process, uh so you enjoy that, you know? Yeah. People I mean that's something that oh from a burro where is it different cop profile, whatever . So having different uh terroirs is is is something that is uh it's very nice to have, yes. For sure. I I think to explore different flavors and and get different perspectives is lots of fun. Do you find that just makes your life very challenging on a producer perspective? Okay, look, since we are a family business, I tell you one thing . Let's go back a little bit and let's talk about history a little bit . So is it challenging? Jess is challenging. Is it time consuming? Jess is time consuming. Is money, you know, it's you you have to put a lot of money into it. Yes, you have to put a lot of money into it. But at the end, look , my grandparents on both sides , they left a legacy for my father and mother. Then my father and mother just left a legacy for me. Then I have my my two kids, Wilfur and Nicole, that it's my responsibility, you know, to get them involved, and which they are, especially Wilford 100% , and Simi and Velia and Nicole and N elson and then have grandchild. Right. My grandfather gave this legacy and is already in me . This property where we are, where my house is, has been in the family 108 years. Wow . So is it challenging? It is very challenging, but I have help. I have Nelson Nicole will foresee me to help me in the future or now they are helping me now. Yeah. And then I have my grandkids that I know because the the oldest one, Wilford's uh son, he's almost three years old . He I he doesn't stop. When he arrives, let's go to the farm. Let's go all the way around in the canam. He calls it the la moto, the motorcycle. Let's go around the farm. Let's go the time. He enjoys nature. Who doesn't enjoy nature? It's gotta be some from somebody from Mars or from Venus who comes to Boquete and goes around Boquete and spends two days in Boquete in the different areas that doesn't enjoy nature. Do you know what I mean? Right. Always green, windy, sometimes it's very rainy. That's not fun . But green, rainy , uh windy birds, rivers running into town, whatever. So he enjoys that so it is challenging because you have to to take care of too many things and then you say wow man I have we have to replant 40% of the trees we didn't we didn't know that terroir trompo, that it was so windy, so dry, and instead of planting in July, we planted in September and the tree did not have enough roots to go in a lost oil because there was when I was a teenager , there was no coffee farm above let's say 1800, not even. But let's use 1800 is easier to understand. Sure. Above that, it was everything was intensive agriculture or caro. Still you can see some farm with caro. Intensive agriculture changed rotate copper from onions, potatoes cabbage, carrots, whatever . And those hills when there heavy tropical rains of bookete come, you know , they will you know take all the soils down and the soil is dead. In some places there is not even soil. You can see the surface as underneath like rock, whatever. Right. So planting there is difficult. So in in Lulo , Lulo es not as deep, es not as windy, and it's raining all the time. So you have something growing, holding the sol, whatever. It was not as difficult, and that farm we bought three years before we bought Trompo . But Trompo was so difficult, you know. It is difficult still, you know. Right now it's nothing is happening there. Nothing is growing. I mean, it's if it is not going to die, it's dormant. Okay. So I don't need any employee in Trompo. But you know, it's like for you is the oh shit. We're gonna sorry about the word time . Oh man, that area is going to, you know, we're gonna have to replant it again. But it's challenging, but it is satisfying. At the end, in four years , or five years, I will, not even that. Before that, I will be cupping coffee from them . You know what I did one year in Trompo ? You know the trees, you plant the trees, three years later, you might have one fruit here, two in that tree, and if you have 14,000 trees , you probably have 10,000 uh fruits. Okay. Then one day I said, Wow, we have enough for a copy. So I got a bunch of my pickers from here, and I brought all those pickers early in the morning to Lula. I said the task today is to pick all the ripe fruits at once . And then we're gonna do a wash process and then we're gonna cop it when they are ready. We're gonna have enough 100 grams. We I think that we had like a hundred and forty grams. One hundred grams so we can cop it. And we did cop it. And of course it tastes different. Right. And this year we're we have it enough. I'm gonna invite you to cop it too. Did you ever come No. No, okay. I would love to. This uh this season we all already have some. Okay. We were doing a wash, so we harvested some now. Then we harvested some again, and then we will have a couple of hundred grams to to cup. So uh but in that area it's different. Okay . And it's uh more like the plant is always growing. The challenge about that area is another one. Okay . Our original Luito, which is the name of my brother, was in another area. The area where it was . It was in the general same general area, but it was a different kind of son exposure. So the sun will come, it was like the sun will come like this . Like this . It was like in a holder. It will come like this and you will only get a few hours of sun. And then you got the mist. And that is the problem with that area versus trompo or el burro is that if you are in el burro and it hasn't rained, it hasn't rained, so the plant is there, you know, getting ready to produce babies, flowers, you know , but it's stressing, stressing. So in any fruit tree, you need a stress period before you get the flowering. In our case, it's dry. So in a gurough you have a dry period, stress str,ess , and then it rains, and then the plant flowers, a lot of flowers, and then you have a second and maybe a third flower, so big flowering period. Over there, you have let's say a week, a week and a half , maybe two weeks of dry, and then you have a rain, and you have five flowers, and then ten flowers, and then five flowers, not one thousand flowers, you know so there all year you're harvesting because of the you know the flowering the stress in the flower and stress and the flower in in the lito one the sun almost never hit the during the day the the farm so we had to eliminate that that one and so we have the other one. That one has plenty of sun. So it's very very uh it's very sunny when in where the we have the coffee plantation. In Tromba, there's a lot of sun. It's open and the soils are lost and everything else. So that's why you have to plant. When when people talk about generate regenerative agriculture, it's not that you are doing it, it's because you don't do it. You don't grow coffee. You have to recuperate the soil. You have to rec you have to so after a year or two then you have pollinization of the weeds of the plants that you have planted, you have rodents , you have butterflies, you have birds. So if you don't plant other species of trees, bushes fruit peace which we plant a lot. Let's say for example : floripondio, igerilla, korpacy poro, guavo , tree tomato, lulo , and then we plant in in Trump this year we planted the whole farm with corn, the whole farm with corn. And in in Lulo too. In Lulo, it was beautiful. In Trompo , most of the corn die . You know whatever. It's a challenge, one more than another one. But nothing is impossible. Nothing whatsoever in life is impossible. So eventually we will have coffee there, yes. Interesting. I want to talk to you about legacy. You you've just referenced this. You're a hundred and eight years in business, is that correct? Yes. What does that mean to you? You're the third generation coffee producer? Yes, I'm the third generation, yes. And what does that mean to you? How does that motivate you? What sort of drive does that create to honor those that came before you and those that will come after you? Well, you know, for me and for many here, so I'm gonna give you an example . When Ricardo Koiner's grandfather from Canada came to Boquete , he was a friend of my grandfather who came through the canal construction. He spent like 10 years in the Panama City for the canal construction. He was from Kentucky. So he moved here and bought a farm. And then he bought his friend from the canal, Tollef Monica, Toled Monica, what Lerida ? So uh Lerida and Elida were a few years difference, but both came from the canal construction. So my grandfather was a friend of Ricardo's, Ricardo Cohen 's grandfather. They used to go into town, of course, walking in the horse, and there was a bar in town where uh only English was spoken. And all the you know, gringos or whatever in Boquete will go out, get drunk there in town and then come back to the farm. And then my father was born, of course, my father, three sisters, and a brother here and L ida were born, and then Ricardo's mother, the daughter of the Canadian, was born and they were friends with my . She was friends with my my father . Okay. Okay? So second generation friends, small town, coffee rovers. Then Ricardo and I. Ricardo and I were two of the seven uh founding members of CAP and we still talk. We just texted all the time. We are , you know, we have a lot of communication because he's the president of SCAP and I also work in some of the committees, so we have to talk all the time. So and we have done business together. We have traveled together with we were the first one who went to one of the conventions together with his uh him and me and other growers . And then Victoria and Wilford. Wilford is a bit older than Victoria, but Victoria is very well involved in coffee. So you know you hear the story about which is in fact correct. Or not the story, you hear the fact that uh so many businesses after the second generation, like let's say 30% disappear. After the third generation, like 60% disappear. After the fourth generation, like 80% disappear. But we are already in the fourth generation and we are growing . It's not that we're we're growing. Like in trouble, Ricardo has a Ricardo went all the way to my same . As a matter of fact, I put a water pipe and across his farm in Trompo. The same thing. So las brujas and el burro were neighbors he bought las brush from my family too from my grandfather. So having given you that example , I can tell you that this is going to continue, at least in the case of my family , because you know why? Because we love what we do . Junior loves what he does . You know, like I told you before, Nelson. Nelson is a farmer Nicole's husband yeah he's always it's like he he he spent like two weeks here in Boquete he was always he has a farm in Jaramillo and then he also went to Trompo. And then he also went to the cacao plantation. He wanted, he said, we haven't uh we need to craft this plant, we haven't done it yet. So he's a farmer. He wants to continue with this legacy as a kid that he loves his kid to be here, including Nicole, and you know, live what we live. So it's like part of us . Remember, when my family was born and raised in the farm, going into town was challenging. You walk one hour into Los Naranjos or whatever, take the horse. So what, did they do? They play around here. They play play in the mountains, they they uh play with fruit. Like around here, I can show you 10 different pieces of different fruits, conquad, cherimoya, blah blah blah . So my father did the same thing, the peaches, the blackberries, different types of blackberries, different types of tomatoes, so they play around here and it was like part of their life, their living. So when I see and my grandfather too, you know, I remember my grandfather on my mother's side, that he was also a businessman, he had uh a He has a coffee mill that he rented the coffee mill to do service to other coffee growers. He also had uh like uh grocery stores, he also had uh gasoline stations, and then he used to, I used to go all over the place with him and all the time he you can see his pocket pulling coffee, fruits of his pocket that he went in the farm. Oh, they didn't have this coffee. So you know, it's like part of what you do, you know , what part of what you uh you are used to from generations back. So the legacy is pure love, you know, pure love and passion. Combination of both. Right. Now your your chunk of the history as a third generation producer is very different to what came before you, right? It was it was much more volume driven, much more uh conventional, let's say, in terms of coffee qualities. Cool. You were you were part of the Specially Coffee Association of Panama. Don't talk about way back yeah I am sixty six years old this well specialty coffee started let's say let's say 20 to make it easy ,20 I'm 666, 2 years ago ago, when I was 40. I was already 40 years old. 40 years old is not, you're already a mature person with kids and everything. It was crisis before back and forth sometimes was very good. Most of the time was good, you know, at least acceptable, you know. But when when the crisis what the the big crisis that came in the 1990s , it was like a very hard crisis . Some experts say that this coffee crisis is not every 10 years, it's not every 25 years, it's not every it's once in a generation. So I was during that crisis. We had to sell farms , like the Cuatro Caminos, Justin's uh in Palmira, the farm, his house there, it was ours. It was my grandfather's. It was in my family until it was sold to him through price because price brought the farm. 75 years ago it was ours. 80 years ago. So we had to sell that farm. Then we had to sell the mill, the big mill that belongs to uh Sanitato . That was our mill. My father built that coffee mill too . We were producing 2,000 bucks of coffee there. 1, 100 meter coffee. We were selling it to commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial. The crisis came. We couldn't, we couldn't , I mean we couldn't pay the bank. So we had to sell that farm with that mill and we keep the higher elevation farm. Luckily, luckily , quality was Was like the Special De Coffee Association of America started in the late 1980s. Okay. And then we started uh in 1996. So we sold our farm around when quality was important. So we kept the higher elevation farms and sold those lower elevation farms. And a few years later, they cut all the coffee and now they have cattle for milk production. So it is not that I didn't suffer it. It's not that my previous generation, like my father or my grandfather, yes, back then it was pure commercial coffee, pure like whatever. So look back then, and you can see it in Ricardo's old meal . Every single farm has had its own meal. You process your own coffee, you dry your own coffee, and uh you uh sell your own coffee. Sometimes locally people got together and some local guy co uh bought a coffee peel it and ship it whatever, Germany, US, whatever. But everybody has its own farm, okay ? The previous generations . Then in the 1960s, quality was not important, remember? The 1960s, the farmers got together, including my grandmother. My grandfather was already dead. Dead. My father was under still under my . So the farms were like under my grandmother and my grandfather on my mother's side, they were still the owners. But my father was working for them. So they decided to do an association called Beneficio Central de Café, Central Coffee Processing Meal. So they built the Rio Cochea Meal that belongs to Felipe Sardino . They built that mill, they got money to build that mill, big mill, and they had receiving stations all over the place. So you will bring your coffee, your cherries to that receiving station. You didn't use your meal anymore, why use your meal everybody use it meal let's do it centralized so we mix all the coffee from this farm from lady from fernandez the dianos fernandez came later, the DNAs. Those are other families who also came back with my other grandfather, the DNO s. Don Benji. Do you know Benjamin the Dienos ? Don Benji's uh Stefan Mueller, you know Stefan of course, right? You know his wife? His wife is also my generation of coffee grower. His father, her father is my father . His uh Mr. Benjamin, he's like 90 years old, 90 plus father was a friend of my grandfather. Okay. He has his own meal . Everybody had his own meal. They got together , they got money, they built the beneficios central de cafe, all the coffees from one thousand meters , sixteen600 meters, 1700 meters, uh 1200 meters was mixed and processing that meal. Big patio, 3,000 square meter patio, very well designed, underneath the build because I have seen the the the the plants like bol t rock stones underneath and the the concrete on top so at night that will release heat to dry the coffee. They all the coffee. I remember because I used to go with to Costa Rica with my father, because my father, at one time, for a few years, he was the manager of that meal. We used to go to Costa Rica and bring samples, and then I remember in Costa Rica mainly German descendants we were the buyers of the green coffee that the meal uh had. Okay. So they used to, we used to go there, cup with them, whatever. They used to copy. My father never cupped coffee. So they used to cop and say, okay, so much for your how many containers? Whatever . That is from 196 0 plus to 1 nineteen ninety when scap started, so we started going back . Let's rebuild the mill , let's improve the me,al let's make a new meal in the farm, and then we started doing our micro mills again. Okay ? So things changed back again to that stage. What would you say is the mark on legacy that you have left or are building and want to leave ? You know the the for me is very satisfactory that like if if I I'm not here tomorrow, I know that if it's not gonna get worse, it's probably gonna get better. Okay. Well for it nicole the his wife nicole's husband they will you know right away they will just continue with what we're doing because they love it. So it's is that it's going to continue into my grandchild. My grandchild's gonna be able to go into the same mountain up there where the trees are still there, where the quetzals are coming and hanging on top of the tree, even better because I'm gonna if they live make corridor in the different farms of the cigua and aguacatillo, the fruits that the quetzalcill the way down. So they will be, you know, doing what I am doing. Okay, let me put it this way. The World Coffee uh Copenhagen took place , you know that they like same as in Amsterdam that they ride bicycles like this for them riding a bicycle is like so easy. It's like me walking from here to the meal. They crossed and da-da-da. So I was giving a presentation there and I said , So the way for me to explain it so you guys understand it, you all from here from Copenhagen, I can see all the bicycles out there. My father and my mother and their family, the brothers and sisters , they ran around the farm and they knew the farm and they knew the birds and they knew what can grow here, the fruits and everything else, they knew where to harvest fruits and come back and bring it. They knew where to how what were they could produce lettuce, but whatever they knew. So the mountain for them is like you riding bicycles here on the streets . And I don't think that of course it has changed. Now I use the Canam. But I in the sense of being in the mountain, I don't think that that's gonna change, at least for the next couple of generations , because they see that I love it and that that yeah. Like J Junior says, he probably said it in in the interview. He came when when the waves are nice, you know? Right. Okay, they were waves. So you can you're a surfer, you have the nice wave. He came when the waves were nice, and then all he's gotta do is just continue doing it right. If you start doing it right from the beginning, it will come out right. So that's what we try to do. Just ride the wave. Ride the wave? Yeah. I think you I think you might have created the wave. I'll compliment you on that. You might have created the wave through the rest of us can ride the wave. Tell me about the best of Panama. You're the most winning producer in the best of Panama over the course of the twenty-nine years of of history. Tell me what is the best of Panama? You know that the best of Panama is the best things thing that have happened to Panama . In every sense . Whatever, tourism , rum seco , cacao, fruits, the canal, yeah, the canal is nice. Somebody else came and built the canal and we are doing a good job with the canal. But the best thing that happened to Panama is the best of Panama because as you know it's a very, very, very, you can continue very, very, very, you can continue very very tough competition right 50 55 60 60 one year we had 65 67 coffee girls putting coffee in and all of them put geisha wow coffee to compete with the best lot. So it's a very challenging competition. So the best of Panama has created like the goal , you know, the gold the gold standards okay even above the gold standards for the world in if panama has been selling geisha from the best of Panama every year at a higher price, that is good not only for Panama, for the whole world. If Panama can sell a kilo of geisha from the best of Panama at $30,000 like you predicted. Remember? You remember right? I do. Remember you told me you you even wrote it . I almost told you. Hey, and then I said, no, I better don't say that. Are you crazy? It might happen. So if somebody from any country can sell at $30,000 a kilo, maybe not that high, but you are already putting a very high standard that why not my friend from Ecuador or Peru or from Colombia, coffee growers like me can sell their coffee at a better price. Not a commodity like New York Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange Sea Market. If you have a specialty coffee, you should be able to sell it at a high higher price, and then you should be able to say, Hey guys, I know , which is obvious. I am not Panama, but look, guys, why do you pay $1, 200 a two how much did you pay for my two thousand one hundred dollars a kilo for a geisha from Wilford in his auction? And you don't want to pay not even thirty dollars a kilo for my geisha, uh uh whatever importer or roaster from from whatever Hong Kong. You pay for these Panamanians a thousand dollars each and you don't want to pay for by geisha $30 . So it's a gold standard BO P . Look, it's such a gold standard that if you go to Shanghai . Shanghai has 9, 100, you know, that's a number that is not exact, 9,100 coffee shops, including Locking, including Starbucks, including whatever. Uh chains and then specialty coffees or the specialty coffees . And if you wanna have a good coffee, all you gotta do is find out in which one of those 9,100 coffee shops they have BOP? If they have BOP, Vest of Panama , auction lots, they have all the geyser from Panama, from different parents, geisa from Ecuador, maybe geisha from Bolivia, ge isha from Colombia, típica mejor ado from Ecuador, they have good lots of coffee. Sure. And what is the best way to find out if they have good coffee if they have BOP auction lot. And not only in Shanghai, it's many other cities in China. So what is BOP? BOP is the world uh gold standard for for coffee . How does it work ? How does it work? Working, working, non-stopping, working, having the right people, you know, having so run me through the whole process from start to finish. We're in the harvest season right now. You have to have the right person. You have to have people well trained. And then you have to have the right bickers. People who are, you know, satisfied with what they're doing. Okay, I tell people, ah, are you uh afraid of running out of uh of pickers? Because they might go, the best business the Boquete has is tourism. They might go to the restaurant, they might go to the fresas con crema, they might go be doing tours of the cows, the pipeline, the rose waterfowl, the whatever, doing tours, tours, tours, and then or uh bar istas or uh bar uh uh uh uh uh waiters or waitresses or cook so how do you know that you're not gonna run out of employees. You know why? Because if let's say it's a roster, because you pay me good for my coffee. And you pay me good for my coffee, I have good living standards for my people, I have good living quarters for my people. I pay my people very well, but I also demand from them. I pay you very well, as compared to other industries, to potato potato uh growers or carrots. I'm not saying because they are friends of mine. Many of them are friends of mine. And they we have to eat. They have to plant potatoes. Sometimes it's it's a mess. Sometimes they lose money, sometimes they win every year. And they cannot afford to pay them better. They cannot have they cannot afford to have better living quarters. You have been here. You see the living quarters for many people. Sure. They are like a disaster. So if I have the capacity, and it's not because they want to. It's because they can't. Commercial coffee, if you sell commercial coffee, you cannot, you know, build nice living quarters with electricity, with internet, with running waters in the toilet. But I do. And I say, okay, you guys are going to learn that we need only red ripe beans. And there is a guy who trains them and there is a guy who is around them and there is a guy who is watching the picking, and then you pick the right people to pick the right fruits. Then you start the process with the right people . They are already like they have everything factoring. The coffee is coming. Uh at noon we have to pulp it, clean up the equipment the day before, start processing the coffee with clean equipment, start uh doing all the process that it takes. Then you know that the next day, maybe 48 hours, 36 hours, 24 hours later, you have to wash it. People are there, everybody is conscious that that coffee has to be washed exactly when it has to be washed. You oh it's at eleven PM . Yes, they know they are eleven PM, they are gonna wash the coffee, and of course they are gonna be compensated, obviously. Sure. But they are not going to leave it for the next day. Oh, we were too tired and we decided to leave it for tomorrow . Is it going to ruin the coffee? Probably not, but that's not the way it should be. They have to wash the coffee at 11 p.m. And then that is important, and that is probably something that it is more difficult because people, you know, staff in any country, you know, it's a bit more difficult than machines. I can use it with a machine. I can use this the music legend machine and watch it right away. But that's another story. Maybe I I don't like it, maybe because I'm 60, 60 years old, but I don't see if you come next to each other to each other . I haven't done it this yet, but I have preferred a little bit the hand wash one. Okay. Not the musician one. But I cannot say that it is inferior quality. It is probably not. But I don't do it like that. So and then the natural process this afternoon, the the coffee that uh is going to come down to the mail this afternoon is going to be processed tomorrow. But then the guys who drive the trucks, they know that they have to go there before 4:30, bring the coffee down, bring it down to the meal. So no coffee left in the field because if I leave a bag of coffee in the field or two or three bags in the field, and then we go the next day and they forgot that they left the bags there, and two days later you have that coffee in the meal. What happened to this coffee? So many things that you have to take care, but you have to have the right stuff to be able to do that. And then from there on you have you have to have, you know, the right places to dry coffee, you have to cup the coffee aga again, cop itin, cop it again, and continue copy it with a good number of people. So we have the logistics department, we have the meal personnel who The ones who uh you know lead the drying operations areas changed from here, you're not reckoning the coffee enough, they cup the coff ee and they notice it. I mean it's if you ruin a coffee, when you cop it , they know, wow, what happened to this coffee. Hey, what happened to this coffee? Trace it. Oh , I know. That's when the truck was going to El Burro and broke down. And three days later, the mechanic, my nephew, fixed the car and then the coffee was there for three days. Or ah, that is one that it was raining so much, and it's a natural coffee process, and it got fungi on top, and we didn't know, we didn't have any other place to do it. We have machines. So then comes the next step. We have three trying machines here at the mill . We have three guardiolas in the lowlands. Very nice, very well set up, very nice, very well taken care of. We have 87 beds in the lowlands. So let's say that I need to dry specially naturals. Natural the more difficult to dry. That's why a lot of people don't do natural, because if you don't have enough area, capacity to dry natural, don't even think about it because they get fung is very quickly. Okay. So we have three guardiola drivers, we have 8 7 beds in the lowlands that we can dry the coffee and people know. Hey Wilford , it's raining here in Caldera, it's been raining for last year, last year it rained for four days . Twenty-four hours, the dryers? You have to have the red right equipment. Then you measure uh with you measure the humidity, the water activity. So we have the green, the green quality team, a couple of guys who take samples that are all day, all day taking samples all over the place, and they know that this coffee was 12.5%, and tomorrow it will be probably 11.5%. The next day they come, may I assure the humidity, okay? Humidity is good. And then the water activity. And then they send it to the uh roster throughout throughout their proper channels through Sebastian, so he will write the sample, so we will cop it the team, the what they call the dream team. Yeah. At least eight of us copied, including Wilford Jr. We copied and then we evaluate the coffee and then we say, okay, it's good to go , store it , uh for reposal, good, offer it to the clients, put it in the the next table when they come, send samples to whatever of this lot because this one didn't pass quality, something is wrong with this coffee . Let's cop it again. It might have been a wrong sample, which happens all the time. Probably today did happen. Sure. It might be that the roast was not, you know, well done, whatever, or the roast, the roaster made a mistake. So we do it again. And we see uh this coffee is get rid of this coffee for the local market, for whatever, sell it to the roasters in Concepción, whatever. So then you have to, you know, you have to have a quality assurance program . I except when I'm not here, that I'm traveling somewhere. I copy every single lot. Wake up early in the morning before we start our you know busy busy things. Very concentrated, we cop the whole stuff cop and we say, okay, good, send the samples to Panama. So will for you know Will Cup when he's not here. So that part is also very important. Storage is very important. You have to have this have the proper storage areas. You cannot have hot areas where you store coffee. And then at the end when you start processing the coffee, like doing the selection in the in the areas where it's stored, you have to have the proper selection. And then before it goes into the box to ship to forward Panama, we copy it again. And then when it's in the box before we seal it, we keep a sample and cop it again, good to go. We have had lots that hey they're already there. We couldn't cop today now tomorrow, but they are already the the the male guy already sealed the boxes because he had to have that loader uh ready on Thursday. We are supposed to cop it on Wednesday. We didn't cop it on Wednesday, we cop it on Saturday, but it didn't pass quality, hey, that coffee didn't pass quality. It's not going. And if you receive a lot, this is what I tell all my clients, if we receive a lot that you didn't like, you say, Well, for this is not what I cup. This is not the same as the samples . Something is wrong with the cup. Hey . No problem. We'll replace a lot. We say a lot similar or better than that one . Humans make mistakes. This is so everything in coffee is a lot of labor intensive. You know? Put it in a box, seal the box, put it over here, then they probably made a mistake, then proved this one here. We try not to make mistakes and we have all the, but there is always mistakes done. But we try to, you know , you uh you we try to limit the number of mistakes by putting controls, you know. Sounds like a really easy job. Yeah, well, you know what? Uh cole at the end when the staff is trained, it's not that difficult, you know. It is You need the right people in the right place. That's what stuff is very important. Right, right. Can you run me through a little bit of the process of the best of panama what is what does the competition look like there's the national week there's the international week can you maybe explain from your eyes how that how that works okay way before all that is done during the past years we have changed from, for example, there was a paca mara back then seven years ago, fi five years ago. I I don't even remember. So we have right now we have three categories. Gecha was gecha natural and varata. Before we are used to have a Pacamara uh also a category. Yeah. And then we had okay. This is what we had. Kecha wash, gecha natural, variety wash, variety natural, and pacamara . Now we only have kecha wash, gecha natural, variety. So the farmers need to know if they are going to separate the pacamara or if they are going to separate another category wash, another category natural, then they need to know to see which one they put in the varietal. And of course gaicha wash, gaicha natural, gaicha wash have to be clean, clean, clean, clean wash. So from now , and then we have to tell them, okay, four years ago was twenty-five kilos, remember at the beginning it was 1 50 pounds that we had to submit. And 100 pounds will go to the auction. Then we changed to 40 kil os. And then last year and the DB4 is 20 kilos . So we have to tell the farmer, okay, farmer, you need to submit 150 pounds. A lot of farmers will say, I don't have that much, but well, okay, if I have to submit 150 pounds, I'm going to save coffee from Torre, where I can collect 155, not what's, or I will collect 75 from Torre and 75 from Falda and mix them together. So they have to know. And they ask, and we have to, the different committees have to work with the board of directors to let the grower know how many kilos we're going to submit and how many kilos we're going to sell in the auction. Okay. And then we also need to know how many judges and how many guest copies we're going to have , because maybe if we have to give you an extreme, which is not the right number, 200 in between guest copers and and judges, then we need to submit a lot of coffee, 60 kilos. Yeah. But if we limit the number of judges and guest coppers, we can like this year we we we submitted 43 kilos, a bit less than 43 kilos that last year. So we have to tell the farming, you need to submit 43 kilos. And they say, oh, 43 kilos, good. So let's do this. In my case, okay, we need to submit 43 kilos. I get my stuff, I said, we need to submit 43 kilos. You multiply that 33 kilos times six. That's 250 kilos of of cherry. But we want to make sure. So we need to pick for that lot 300-350 kilos of cherry. So how many people do I need to pick 300 kilos of cherries in the morning in uh torre. El corte is very good. I think that we need 40 people. So we send 40 people there . I'm giving my example. All the farmers are doing something similar. Okay ? I don't want to say the same, but it's the same. Okay, I want to big pick a big lot . So I need 50 people to pick this big lot in order for me to have one uniform lot from one day, one morning picking, one single process, right together, very even lot , so we'll we'll submit that lot to the BOP. And then from the BO P , when we submit the lots for the BOP competition, the best of Panama, the SCAP, the Special Tech Office Association of Panama hires. We hire a private auditor . They do everything. Nobody in SCAP has nothing to do with what the auditors do. In fact, when the auditors receive their lot , they have a triple blind coat that you don't see them. You have one of and then they receive your lots, they receive cold lot , and then they take these three codes, they put it in your coffee, they put it with your documents in an envelope, they seal the envelope so you know that these three codes belong to these lots this these codes belong to this lot put in a safety box nobody knows not even the auditors even if they open whatever they cannot because the is it is in a seal envelope in a in a uh safety box at the end of the competition before uh the uh evening dinner where they are going to uh the uh they are going to you know call the winners. Yeah, the auditors with the he hadedges just the, they opened it safety. They open envelope by envelope. Okay. Which lot guy one ? P twenty two twenty-two. Not this one. Not this one. This is P2222. Who is the owner? Okay, he's the owner, P2222. And so on. So there is no way , no way for anybody to know which lot is wish . Until they open that. And not only do they open the envelope, they have to open the codes . 2222. Okay, this is 2222. The winner is whoever. So how have we managed to win the BO P ? It's not that difficult to figure out call because having high elevation fararm . When we started planting geisha, higher and higher, we planted geisha in Torre. It was Torre goes to 1830, let's say, 1800 to 1830, what we submitted. And then I think that nobody had not even in back then 1700, but probably somebody had 1800, but of course, I am one of the founding members of CAP. The second VOP we won with the Kato . I know what it takes to win. I know that you have to be careful with your lot. I know that you have to have the proper area where you put your lot for the BOP . And then later on we started copying, you know, the different lots. And the my team, the dream team, copying, and we picked, we did our own mini BOP picking throughout the year, the different lots. Not not when we started winning. We didn't have that many lots. And then we started, you know , kind of doing a competition in between our own lots until we decide which one will go to the BOP. But having the higher elevation farm and being able to do all this with my team, okay , be by myself would not be, you know, successful like that. You couple coffee, oh this is the best one. But if you have a team, statistically more people will be able to pinpoint which one is the best lot. So statistically with eight people copying the lots and doing it the way we did it, we have managed, you know, to win the best of Panama in the geisha category in the past 10 years six times out of twenty . And uh so doing it like that. But it's not that nowadays I am the only one who did it. I think that I am one of the few ones who, you know, started doing it like mini VOP with many people from my own internal competition. Internal competition. But now more people , you know, they get together, they cop, and then and then people have higher elevation. And then it's it's something that you know you want to win. Of course, it's beautiful winning. Winning the six -time BOP feels as good as winning for the first time. You know, you always want to win. And you do everything possible to win. There is not everything, everything from now, now, now, now. I don't know if that coffee that you saw this morning is gonna go to the BOP. We don't know, until we cop it. Okay, until we cop it with other lots. So but we start from day one when we start harvesting, we start thinking about BOP, thinking about VOP. And everybody does too. Everybody in the team, thinking about BOP, thinking about BOP. That's gonna be for the BOP. Let's so it's like every day it's a v an everyday work. Just all year your team is copying and you're marking this this could be a contender, that could be a contender, keep forty we do it like yeah we uh BOP flag we call it BOP flag BOP flag so if we have uh let's say we need to submit like we did last year 43 kilos if we have 200 kilos of that , we sell the rest, but we will keep fifty kilos for BO P . And if that one wins , let's see if we did more than twenty watts and more than twenty natural . So that lot has one in twenty chances of winning, you know. But it might win, you know. Right. D describe to me the ideal expression of a geisha wash . The ideal expression of a geisha wash is a very, very clean, sweet floral with no like red fruits not even cherries not even strawberries of course no blackberries no blueberries over challenging the sweet mandarin , the lemongrass, the florals that you can even notice it not only when you on the uh with aroma fragrance but in the cup, maybe a bergamon, maybe something like uh you might have some uh black tea there but it will be very very clean. You will notice uh you will not notice uh uh uh um mango pieces, yes. But once you go into a cherry , it might be in the wash, but once you go into blackberry or blueberry, forget it. Get rid of it. Don't put it in the BOP. Because in the BOP, of course, BOP is the standard. Yeah. And uh it might be eliminated by the natural jury. And that's why we do wash at noon . The chances that they pick the fear the first fruit that was picked from the tree at seven in the morning and it was popped let's say that one thirty in the afternoon, that's five hours later, six hours later, versus seven in the morning and seven in the evening, that's 12 hours later. That's a wash. I mean, everybody does it like that. We used to do it like that. Yeah. But if I do it in the morning, I know that those fruits in the bag, let's say it's a hot day, and the fruits are in the back, waiting for the truck to pick them up in the late afternoon, bringing them down from the meal and then start processing the coffee. That one will have a little bit more of a still a wash, still a sweet, clean wash, but it will probably have a little bit more of it, you know, oh wow, this is fruity, like oh, that's a little bit of strawberry there. Not nothing wrong with that. So for you florals are the most important? Florats, yes. And sweet citrus. Sweet citrus, yes. In terms of flavors. In ton of flavors, yes. Okay. Beautiful. Sounds delicious. Uh how about a geisha natural? A geisha natural . So I tell this to everybody. If you are a judge , it doesn't matter if you like the guy who is did a crime because the guy is too tall, too red haired, too fat, too ugly. Are you describing me? you cannot judge because of the appearance. So when I cup and I find in my table something very heavily anaerobic like let's put an extreme funky I said I score it down I shouldn't because a lot of people like funky coffee so for me a natural classic natural shall be a All the descriptors that I told you about the wash add to that a perfect combination of a blueberry there, of a blackberry there, not so much whiny, uh whiny goes a bit beyond. Okay. Uh and some other like probably some cherries, some strawberries, combined with these other florals, lemongrass, sweet orange, mandarins, that combination, if you do the perfect synergy of those tools, that is a perfect gecha natural. Every morning, every morning I drink one put over of geya wash and one of geisha nato . The anaerobic, yeah, it goes a little bit beyond because you start drawing some winey taste, although you can do a very good combination of that wining with those florals, lemongrass, jam and peaches, whatever, sweet mandarins, you do a combination that it could be very good. But uh but it's not a classic natural. The classic natural is a coffee that did not go into any prolonged fermentation because the classic natural when you put it in the bed they are fermenting. You have to rake them at night they start they continue fermenting. You have to rake it, you have to dry it properly. If the if the rain starts in the middle of your drying and I have the beds here and the beds in Caldera or whatever you don't have don't machine I don't have machines, that coffee will ferment more. And it will not be a classic, clean, classic natural. It will be more towards, you know, the processy one. Do you do you have a preference as a coffee producer between a geisha wash and a geisha natural if both are perfect. I prefer the wash. You prefer the wash? Just because people ask me. Not because if you will tell me which one do you prefer? Both. It's not like Wilford Junior, you know what? Wilford Jr. tells me? This is to give you the difference. Wilford Jr. says, my father doesn't think that katui is a coffee. He never drinks katwai. He never drinks katwai. So Geisha wash and geisha not road. I'll say geisha wash. Okay . I agree with you. I'm a geisha wash guy. Curious about specialty coffee. So specialty coffee, you were part of a specialty coffee association of Panama. That's the moniker that we've categorized the higher ends part of the industry, at least for the last 20 years. However, it's a very vague, loosely designed, uh loosely defined term, right? 80 points, sweet, clean, balance, zero defects. Do you still believe you're a specially coffee producer, or do you believe you are into a new frontier? Do you use a different label or moniker to describe what you're doing? I many years ago I was using like everybody the special specialty coffee . Then I changed to super specialty coffee. Super specialty. Then I changed to ge isha versus super specialty. Okay. Varieties any variety even the most sophisticated varieties that I have cup and I put it next to a geisha that is a super special tea coffee. The very nice, very high elevation, very good terroir uh varieties, floral varieties of Panama. And you put it next to a geisha, the geisha for me is in another category. Okay. This is super specialty. This is geisha. And then you have the specialties. Eh , you know . What about luxury coffee? Have you heard that term thrown around? We have a committee that is called the Pan ama Geisha Luxury. Committee, but it's so difficult. We hired a we she's still working for us. Dr. Tomai , she came the year before last year and she did a presentation uh after the BOP . I I met her, yeah. You met her? Okay. She started working for us on luxury. How to be caught how to get your geisha to be a luxury item. That is very that is difficult. Producing coffee is not difficult. You have your challenge. Producing specialty coffee is not difficult. Producing geisha and good geisha is not that difficult, but making it a luxury, everything is like from the boxes, from the callers, from the market , from the you know the the attention to details customer relations so we want to be there we are working on that and we know that we have the product our geishas are something that if we do the other part right can be easily you know served next to a champagne in a whatever uh Gucci store in Paris or instead of serving tea in the Muslim countries where they don't drink champagne they can serve geisha easily it can be something that you know uh replaces champagne in a nice place where you get champagne because you are buying something, you are buying a Ferrari, they sit you down and they give you a champagne. The Asia can easily make it there but we need to do a lot of work to get there. So Geisha and I think that in eventually, eventually little by little probably probably uh when Wilford is like more time will happen during my time? Yes, probably, but it's it's challenging. We have done a lot of things. And I tell you one thing people say especially in this committee and the different experts that we have had uh you know advising us that our biggest market that I will is willing to pay more, of course this year is an exception, the the Dubai that bought the 30 kilos, 30 dollars a kilo. Yeah. But it's mostly in Asia, Japanan, but Jap sells half to to China. In China they have half of the geisha like this year the geisha natural was went when 100% to to China. And previous years at least 50 % went to China. So people say the Chinese look at Western brands for you know branding . But But some brands, like probably the purses, the shoes, the wallets, the whatever from Gucci or whoever, maybe yes, and they go and buy them. Some wines, some whiskey, expensive whiskey. Maybe the Chinese buy them. But the Chinese are not like , if , for example, XY est roaster in the world, best coffee shop in the world, best whatever. They don't follow them that much. I know because I go there a lot. You know, the Bruce Cup champion of the world is from China, the British Roaster Champion of the world in China, second place but champion of the world in China. China has 1,400 million people, man . So they cannot they can barely know what intern ally they are doing. So and they, you know, the luxury for them is different than the luxury for the West. So, but still our market , still in in in China, in our case and in Biop to and not in New York or in Toronto or in or in Paris or in London or in it's not there. Not even Dubai is got only uh UAE only has ten million people, you know. Right. Out of out of those tr ten million people, three are three million are Emiratis. Right. Qatar has 3.6 million people, 300,000, 400,000 Qatar is. Okay. So how can even if they are very, very sophisticated, rich, they like very good, and they don't drink alcohol is difficult you know to get if it is like how much coffee can they buy you know even if they have all the money. It's very limited market. Very, very limited market, small markets. That but in another like Tokyo, Tokyo has 30 million people. One like you get in a train station and the longest it will take you to from one city to the other one is 40 minutes. So Tokyo is interesting. They are very conservative. So they are not like the Koreans or the Chinese that the young generation's like, I jump into it. I don't care.. I jump The Japanese say, no, I'm not gonna jump. Let me be very careful. I don't know. They do, many of them. They are large, they have money, they have a good population, they have a lot of tourists. So they that's a good, good market, Japan. Very interesting market. Absolutely. And it's large. I think the total population of Korea is not even 180 million people, but they're good too, very good. Hong Kong is pretty small. Singapore 5 million people is too small . So how can you get luxury to be consumed? You have to, you know , convince those people that you are doing the right, like the way they pack tea. Tea is also very well packed. Any packaging in Asia is beautiful. Teas are amazing. And they you go to a coffee shop in any city in China, Chen Chen, whatever, and you order a very good geisha, one of those very nice, like you said this morning, a little geisha wash built a lot in a coffee shop, and then you order that one and you order same quality . Uh tea, the tea is 10-15% more expensive. And they say that's okay. I mean, geish is not that expensive. Not so in Europe, not so in the US, not so in Canada . Coffee, good coffee, you can buy good coffee for five, five, eight dollars and pull over. Yeah. Very good. So luxury, I think that we we will be little by little in the mission in restaurants a little bit . Uh some mission in restaurants are serving it. A bit challenging for them . You have to, you know, do it right in order for your client at the end of the two and a half hour dinner to be able to drink a you know a pullover of geisha. Uh past was saying that she does it before they arrive or she does a pairing with coffee. It's not like wine wine is a drinkable thing. You drink wine and you start from the beginning all the way until the end. You don't leave the restaurant until you finish your cup of wine. Not with coffee. That's it. Sure. So it's a little bit more challenging. Fascinating. Interesting. I like it. You're a pioneer in your field, arguably the best coffee producer in the world . Where do you look for inspiration? With my partners , with the members of the association, with what Porto is doing when he dries coffee wa bean by bean when uh my neighbor uses like in uh insulated uh reactors with cold walls water run ning when somebody like Carlos from Carmen six, seven years ago brought some tanks. He had a guy who was a friend of his uh he went to school in David together and he was building for the brew for the uh um beer industry tanks he said why don't you use these tanks to Fermanju Coffee. When the way we dry the coffee in cold rooms, I didn't invent that. I didn't invent the dark room. So all the time when you are with other coffee growers around you, like on Saturday I was with Diego Les cano, I was with Hunter Teman, I I was there with Manuel, I was there . So how do you store your coffee ? All that it's not that it's my single inspiration, but uh that helps you think that it is possible for you to win the BOP again. You know, 60 farmers are competing, but I think that I can win the BOP again, so let's go for it. Let's work on winning the BOP, you know? Because that's so satisfying winning the BOP. Cash man. So satisfying because you did a good job. It's not because you beat your partner that you see every day. You didn't beat him. You s you just did better. Sure. You know? Like let's have like one, one, two, three. So they were they they just said, hey guys, we're kind of tired of we haven't won for X many. I don't remember how many years. So let's win all three at the same time . You know, I want to do the same thing, at least with the two geysers that we did before, because we don't have uh varieta, so I want to not the be not only with the winning the BOP but it's like a pyramid. If I'm doing trying to win the BOP , all my lots that I sell to my clients , they will be going on the same, you know, protocols of quality, quality , quality. If there is no quality, if the coffee does not have the quality, we did something wrong. If it tastes bad, it's because we did something wrong. We can eliminate it uh because some people call it a this this is some people call it quality assurance assurances from the very beginning or qua uh the other term is quality uh ity selection or something that you just eliminate the bad one. Why do you why do you have a bad lot ? Why? You shouldn't have a bad lot . So that is my inspiration, trying to get all the lots from the very beginning, doing things right from the very beginning so they will come out right for the client's satisfaction. If a client is satisfied, I will be satisfied. If a client is not satisfied , man, it's bad. You feel bad. So having a good product for my clients is a satisfaction for me, and it's something that uh thinking about winning the BOP all the lots are done right and something that uh that satisfies me very much, yeah. I like the answer, the the community compound. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Communities. Otherwise, if we were not SCAP , you wouldn't be here. Cooper. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's an integral part of Panama's success is the collaboration and competition amongst the coffee producers here. I have two more questions . The first one is for advice. I have the opportunity this week to interview somebody that that I look up to and, I know that you you also look up to, you've told me many times before, and I look up to you, so I'm gonna ask you advice on what I should maybe ask him this week. It's Price Peterson. If you had the opportunity to ask Price anything. Well, he says you know he's a scientist. He looks at everything. And he's so smart. He's a he's he's a Ph D . That any question that you ask will be like an answer that he will give. It will be like, gos h, where did he get that information from . Example . High elevation, 2200 meters, 2300 meters. Not only the temperature, but the radiation . Because he has the group of you know the the the um they are study the the price peterson foundation the price peters foundation they have the the Smithsonian and Smithsonian working in their farm so the Smithsonian did a study on coffee at 2300 meters and they explained to Price, Price understand this very clearly that the radi ation blocks whatever chemical into the plant, that the leaves of the plant will stay yellow and there will be a deficiency of one of these minerals that the plant needs to grow, produce, whatever. So not only the temperature, but if you cut the radiation a little bit with let's say like a shade, like dark shade, black shade , whatever, a little bit, then you will avoid that radiation to coming on contact with your leaves. So things like that, price has it. Price can talk to you about why it is so different that you guys have coffee if the same, you know , genetics of one coffee is the other one and why does it taste different? And then he looked for the answer. So for any question you ask price , it will be, any question you ask, it will be like a different, totally different than what you whoever you have met here. From the very look, Price was one of the founding members of SCAP. The other one was Jimmy Hunter's uh father . So when the way we formed the association is as follows. We had during the coffee crisis , the USAID, United States was helping the whole Central America produce non-traditional agricultural exporters. Okay. So what they did is they went to all the different countries in Central America , they came here to get the and they say, guys, come here . Ricardo, a bunch of others, they said you guys need to form an association. We're gonna finance it, an executive director, we're gonna send you a lot of technicians from all over the world who know how to produce asparagus , strawberries, blackberries, frambuesa. you're you're you're in bad shape with coffee. So we started that association and af after a few few years we said, you know what we need to do? We need to form the specialty specialty coffee commission. A commission , the commission for tropical fruits, mangustin, rabut an, lichi , the commission for you know spargous, whatever, high elevation, the commission for specialty coffee. So we call price price . We want you to be part of the commission. He only had coffee at 1100 meters, 1200 meters of the specialty coffee commission, because we understand that you have been to the SCA to visit the SCA, SCAA convention. And Price said, guys, commission, Specialty Coffee Association of Panama, right there. Good. Special Tech Coffee Association of Panama. Then Price was like the ambass ador of the Special Tech Coffee Association of Panama. So when whenever we went to a convention, he would tell us, give us like one what the same thing that he said in the in the higher grounds. He said guys, you gotta go to all the different talks, you know, and raise your hand and say that you are from Panama, from Panama, from Panama . Don't ask whatever thing. And but say, I'm from Panama, I am from Panama. So at the end, it worked. People say, Wow, a lot of Panama in here. And there were suddenly like eight of us. And then one year I remember we went to another convention, I was the president of SCAP, price was always there. And then one day he was telling, hey, hey, a lot of people from he was member of SEA Board of Director too. First growing country member of Board of Director was Price. So Price called a lot of people. He said, oh look, uh Wilford is the president of the association, don't meet him. Hey, hey, hi, hi, hi. How are you? So and then I said, yes, I'm the president of the association, but he's the boss. So price is now you know he's retired. We're talking about we formed the association uh thirty years ago as a matter of fact. Right. So Price was very active too. So and he's a very smart guy, you know. So anything he he can, you know, elaborate on anything. So so if you had the opportunity to sit in a room and raise your hand and say I'm Gilford Lamassis, I'm a Panamanian coffee producer, what is the question that you would ask the price? Well uh to price price . So what do what can we do to have coffee at higher elevation , where it's very cold, where it's very windy, and higher and higher, what can I do to the tree? He might probably not come out with the answer, but he will look for the answer.. Okay I'll ask him and I'll and I'll follow up. Ask him if it is possible to grow coffee at twenty-one, twenty-five hundred meters. Twenty five hundred meters. Tell him something like that. Okay . Something that he will start thinking and he will give you that other answer. I mean that we will elaborate . I'll circle back with you with an answer and I'll let you know. I'll tell you price's secrets there. Final question. What does coffee mean to you? Well, coffee means to me, you know, my family, my family, my my my family from the very beginning, my family on my father's side, my family now, my family in the future. So it's like part of the family. We cannot do without coffee. I tell people, if you get b if coffee doesn't produce because whatever came, I don't know how to do anything else. I probably will drive an Uber in Panama City or manage one of the Starbucks stores. I don't know. So everything, like family and everything else is coffee for me. Yeah. Beautiful. Wellfruit, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for choosing us. Thank you for the job you're doing. You're doing a good job. You're growing very good . You know what you're doing. You're interested. You love this. I can tell. You don't stop. That's what we tell people. Hey, how can we invite this guy, whoever guy, X, Y, Z from whatever country, to the best of Panama? He doesn't care about the Pes of Panama. He doesn't care about Panama Geisha. He doesn't care about Panama Coffee from Panama. We should invite people who care like you. Right. So thank you. It's easy to care when I can look up to somebody like you. I have told you before, thank you, because people like you have made this community better from the very beginning. From when Ricardo's grandfather from Canada with money, my grandfather had a lot of money when he came from the canal. I mean, a lot of money for today is different. And money to buy the farm, establish a meal, do whatever he needed because he was making money. Had nothing to do . And he had ide as and he spread the ideas around the population and then things started changing because the synergy that other people brought from doing uh documentaries , that documentary will be seen all around the world. Uh people will just go online. Let's look at it. Wow, it's so good . It happens only if we have that synergy of people coming from other countries , other industries , like especially let's say people like Willem Bud, people like Ecuador Coffee, people like Ibrahim, people like other industries, like Altieris, with money, they come here and they help us. And you are one of the examples. You love this. You love it. Yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to make it trying to get away from coffee.