BOQUETE, A Shangri-La of coffee amid cool, green mountains

Sherman's Travel Magazine, Spring 2010 • Sherman's Spotlight on Panama • By Victoria De Silverio

 

Tucked in the green Talamanca highlands on the western flank of Panama near the Costa Rican border, the winsome hamlet of Boquete enjoys springtime climes year round. And, with its cheerful avarian style cottages dotting the flowery hillsides, Boquete resembles an off-season Swiss ski village. In town, modest churches mingle with boutiques and cafés, and outfitters offer white-water rafting, hiking and birding excursions.
 But there are many happy reminders that one is in Panama, such as men crowding stands selling lottery tickets; indigenous Ngöbe-Buglé women in brightly colored embroidered dresses; and mules hauling sacks of coffee, the region’s most celebrated asset.

 

Conquistadors and gold rushers used the valley as a shortcut (boquete means “gap” or “opening”), and by 1911 Europeans had settled the town. Among them was Norwegian Tollef B. Monniche, who designed the Panama Canal’s emergency dams and founded Finca Lérida, now one of Boquete’s largest coffee plantations. Boquete’s alpine microclimates and rich volcanic soil are ideal for producing high-quality beans. In 2007, a pound of rare Panamanian geisha beans sold at an auction for an unprecedented $130, and last year prices hit $300. Smooth and sweet with notes of honey, lemongrass, lavender, jasmine, tangerine, and tea, the coffee brewed from geisha beans is singular.

 

To understand what makes Boquete coffee so special, visit some of its small family owned estates. On a Boquete Mountain Safari coffee-tasting tour,(507-6627-8829; http://www.boquetmountainsafaritours.com) guests get a closeup view of artisanal coffee production, from the bean planting to roasting, and then they taste the brew.

 

“Coffee is like a mystery,” says Finca la Milagrosa owner Tito Vargas, a local with the dirt-stained hands of a farmer and the dark steady eyes of a mystic. He named his farm Milagrosa (“miraculous”) because naysayers doubted he could grow anything on a depleted 20-acre plot with his machines made of spare parts—like the grinder that relies on a car transmission. But the proof lies in Milagrosa’s delicious coffee. At organic farm Finca Dos Jefes, California-born owner Rich Lipner sprays the trees with a brew of molasses, phosphorus, and nitrogen, and cultivates the fields according to the lunar calendar. Boquete Mountain Safari tours culminate at Finca Lérida with a cupping, a professional tasting to evaluate the aroma, body, and flavor profile of several varietals, hosted by the operation’s head of quality control Andrès Lopez. Visitors gain an appreciation for coffee’s complexity along with a quickened pulse.

 

http://www.shermanstravel.com/spotlights/Panama/Boquete