Gesha Coffee: How an Ethiopian Variety Became the World’s Priciest

Gesha — also spelled Geisha — is an arabica variety from the Gesha forest region of Ethiopia that spent decades as an obscure entry in research collections, then became the most expensive coffee in the world. At the 2025 Best of Panama auction, a washed Gesha from Hacienda La Esmeralda sold for $30,204 per kilogram. The reason people pay that is the taste: at its best, Gesha is intensely floral and delicate in a way few coffees are.

A long, quiet journey

Gesha's story is mostly one of being overlooked.

Seeds were collected from the Gesha forest region in 1936 by a British consul. The coffee was planted in Tanzania and later in Costa Rica, where the agricultural research centre CATIE catalogued it in 1953 as accession T2722. From there it spread through Central America and reached Panama in the 1960s.

For decades it was planted here and there and largely ignored. It yields little, which made it a poor choice for farmers paid by volume, and there was no market willing to pay for its flavour.

The 2004 moment

That changed in Panama. The Peterson family's Hacienda La Esmeralda, in the highlands of Boquete, identified the Gesha growing on their farm as something unusual and separated it from their other coffee. In 2004 their Gesha won the Best of Panama competition and sold at auction for $21 a pound, at the time an extraordinary price.

That auction is often treated as a turning point for specialty coffee as a whole. It showed that a single variety, grown at altitude and kept separate, could command prices far beyond the commodity market — and it sent farms across Panama and then Latin America planting Gesha.

What it tastes like

Gesha's reputation rests on aroma. The classic profile is intensely floral, often compared to jasmine, with bergamot, citrus and stone fruit such as peach, a light, tea-like body, and a clean, sweet finish. It can taste more like a fine tea than what most people think of as coffee.

That character depends heavily on where and how it is grown. Gesha has exceptional quality potential, but it needs high altitude and careful processing to reach it. Grown low, or handled carelessly, it can be unremarkable — which is part of why it was ignored for so long.

Why it costs so much

Several things stack up:

• Low yields. Gesha produces little coffee per tree, so each kilogram costs more to grow.
• Altitude and care. The best lots come from high, often cool farms, picked and processed meticulously.
• Tiny lots. Competition lots are just a few kilograms — 15 to 20 kg at recent Best of Panama auctions.
• Auctions and prestige. Top lots are sold by competitive online auction, where roasters and buyers from around the world bid for the best-scoring coffees, partly for the coffee and partly for the distinction of owning it.

The recent numbers

The 2025 lot, which scored 98.00 — the highest score in the competition's history — sold for $604,080 in total. The 2026 auction, which closed on 24 September 2026, raised just over $3 million from 50 lots of 15 kilograms each, at a weighted average of about $4,056 per kilogram.

These are auction prices for a handful of kilograms. The Gesha you can buy from a specialty roaster costs a small fraction of them — still well above everyday specialty coffee, but within reach for a special occasion.

Gesha or Geisha?

Both spellings are in use. Gesha follows the Amharic transliteration of the Ethiopian region the variety is named after; Geisha came from British colonial records. Broadly, coffees from Ethiopia use Gesha, while producers elsewhere often use Geisha — though some Latin American farms now use Gesha to signal Ethiopian-origin stock. Either way, it is the same variety.

How to brew it

Treat Gesha gently; its appeal is in delicate aromatics that heavy-handed brewing can bury.

• Use a paper-filtered pour-over. A V60 or Chemex gives the clarity Gesha's florals need.
• Brew a little lighter. Around 55–60 g of coffee per litre, at the lighter end of the usual range in the ratio guide, lets the aromatics come forward.
• Use good water. With a coffee this delicate, flat or heavily buffered water costs you more than usual — see the water guide.
• Let it cool a little. Many of Gesha's aromatics are easier to taste as the cup drops from scalding to warm.

Gesha is one branch of a large family tree; the coffee varieties guide shows where it sits, and the Ethiopian coffee guide covers the country it came from.