About
Reviving a Region: The Story of Gesha Village
Welcome to Pride of Gesha
We are celebrating our 7th auction, offering the world-renowned coffees of Gesha Village Coffee Estate! We built our farm from the ground up with the intention to grow extraordinary coffee while helping to develop the local community. Since 2017, our annual auction has offered coffee lots with unparalleled flavor profiles which have won the hearts of coffee aficionados around the world.
WHEN WE RECOGNIZE BEAUTY WE ARE AT PEACE
At Gesha Village Estate, we believe that beauty and peace are essential parts of the creation and the enjoyment of our coffee. Our trees are grown amidst lush, serene landscapes, and the tranquility of the environment can be tasted in every cup. Savor the unique quality and flavor profiles of our auction lots and let the beauty and peace of Gesha Village Estate carry you away.
Our History
Passion
Our founding partner Rachel Samuel was born in Ethiopia, but we discovered the country anew when we came back in 2007 to make a documentary about Ethiopia’s amazing coffee. During this process, we developed a passion for the country, its people, and its coffee industry. That path quickly led us to Willem Boot, the San Francisco Bay Area-based coffee educator, well-known for his passion for the Gesha variety. As Willem taught us the fundamentals of growing and evaluating coffee with a quality focus, the shadow of Gesha loomed large over our conversations.
Dream
For months we searched for the perfect spot to realize our dream to establish a coffee farm in Ethiopia. We found it in the southwestern highlands of the Bench Maji province, near the town of Gesha. While the untouched landscape provided us with the unique opportunity to build the coffee farm of our dreams from the ground up, it offered us something else one-of-a-kind: close proximity to the Gori Gesha forest, the variety’s birthplace and site of the Panamanian Gesha discovery in the 1930s.
Creation
We quickly got to work, harvesting a seed selection of wild Gesha plants from the Gori Gesha forest. With that prized stock in hand, we then spent month after tireless month turning our remote piece of land into a working coffee farm capable of producing some of the world’s best Gesha coffee. In the process, we’re helping to create a coffee industry in Gesha’s birthplace. Western Ethiopia has historically been largely disconnected from the global specialty-coffee market, but now world-class Gesha coffee is available just a stone's throw from where the variety originated.
Pride of Gesha Categories
Champions Reserve
The Champions Reserve category in the 2023 Pride of Gesha auction features the very best by Gesha Village Estate. Every lot selected for Champions Reserve has achieved a 90+ score and boasts extraordinary attributes in the cup, from signature jasmine and honeysuckle aromas to delicate, complex fruit notes of bergamot, strawberry, peach and papaya. Champions Reserve lots feature extraordinary and truly memorable flavors.
Farm Reserve
The 2023 Farm Reserve lots are astoundingly balanced and sweet with aromatically driven expressive flavor profiles. All Farm Reserve lots have been evaluated at 88 points and above. Intense fruit flavors and expressive aromas characterize the Farm Reserve coffees, making for a memorable taste journey you’ll be proud to share with your customers.
Innovators Reserve
For this category we employ proprietary processing methods to provide extra depth to the flavor notes of Gesha Village coffees. Lots in this category provide a profound sensory experience that pays tribute to the unique characteristics of our coffees. Our techniques in fermentation, drying, and beyond introduce wildly complex and unmistakable flavor notes to the coffees.