Boquete is a sweet little town in the highlands of Panama. The climate is cool, people friendly, and it has recently been known as the best place to retire or own a second home. But to me Boquete means coffee. While Panama grows only a small percentage of the world's coffee, they grow the world's finest. For 5 of the last 9 years, the number 1 coffee in the world has been grown in this small country, right here in Boquete, where there are more than 1600 farmers growing coffee beans, some with only a few acres.

Today we toured Cafe Ruiz, an award winner coffee producer. Our guide was Carlos who was in a unique position to talk about Cafe Ruiz.

Ruiz has 11 fincas (plantations) around the Boquete area and also buys from other growers. Mr. Ruiz exports 90% of his crop as green beans, meaning 'to-be-roasted-at-destination'. Much goes to North America as well as Japan and Europe.

We first visited one of the fincas about 15 minutes out of Boquete. It did not have the appearance of a farm or plantation due to the variety of plants and trees. Carlos explained that Arabic, the varietygrown in this region, is best grown in mid-level altitudes with a mix of other trees; Ruiz has 40 kinds of plants in addition to coffee bushes. This allows for shade; insects have more natural attraction to citrus than coffee; other plants attract birds which also eat insects; and other trees add more and different nutrients into the soil.

Harvest season begins in October and we saw a number of families of pickers. They are the Ngöbe Buglé people who live in the surrounding forest and come to the highlands each year for coffee season. The grower provides housing and other benefits for the families while on location and often the same family groups return each year.  Men are in jeans and t-shirts but the women wear traditional costume of long solid baggy dress with a multi-colored rick-rack trim. They are a shy people whose facial features remind me of native Americans.

Coffee plants can live up to 90 years and continue to produce. From seed they take about 7 years for the first crop and every 5 or 6 years they are trimmed to the ground to start anew.

We moved to the processing plant not far down the road. This is a 24/7 operation. Pickers work from 8am until 4pm after which the bagged beans are brought here, weighed in metal bins, whose bottom opens for the beans to into a water bath below. Good beans sink and lesser ones float (more about floaters later.) The good beans flow down a shoot to be squeezed from their red coating, split, and sent to the pre-dryer and then the dryer. The red bean coatings are put into a compost bin and used as fertilizer on the plants back at the finca. Sometimes pre-drying is done outdoors in the sun in big lines. We met a few people who say they can tell the difference in coffee that has been pre-dried outdoors. Drying is done in giant rotating heaters fed by fire wood or coffee bean casings, thus reusing all parts of the bean. Beans are then sorted by a number of criteria like size, color, weight, and all for good reason. Finally they are stored in giant burlap bags and aged for up to 6 months. Processing plants are built on the side of a hill allowing gravity to do some of the heavy lifting. This natural gravity process, known as beneficios was created right here in Boquete and is used world-wide.

Only about10% of the beans are roasted for local consumption and our last stop was at the shop and tasting room of Cafe Ruiz - finally!. This is a clean space so we donned hairnets and lab coats. Carlos gave us a test to see if we could discern certain smells in beans or grounds. The smells denoted over-, under- or perfect-roasting. Finally we got to taste! We were given 3 roasts (European. Latin and Italian roasts) and told how to tell one from the other. Not easy for one untrained (and I drink lots of the stuff). Carlos said that French Roast, which many people considered the best and strongest, is considered by coffee experts as a bitter, over-roasted coffee. Extra roasting makes the bean heavier too, which means you'll pay more for it. 

Ruiz has earned one #1 in the world, Finca Lerida two, and Finca Esmeralda three or four. All of these are Boquete-grown. The most recent winner was a Geisha (Guessha) variety from Esmeralda, which sold at a record $130 per pound for green beans. 

All of the delicious coffee in Panama, being number 1 and all that – there is a diminishing amount of coffee being grown here. For several years Boquete has been named one of the top spots in the world for retirement or a second home. Developers are buying up property such as long time fincas and turning them into gated communities. Trees are removed for houses, thus allowing for erosion and during the rainy season, landslides. Carlos could not fault the farmers for selling as realtors might pay $1M for a finca which previously would never reap that from coffee beans in a lifetime. 

I mentioned that Carlos had a unique perspective, because he began his coffee career picking as a very young boy, around 10 years. He was one of 9 children and after his father left, his mom took the kids to Ruiz to pick. After a few years of picking, Carlos moved up the chain, working in the processing plant and eventually became a professional taster and finally a tour guide.  There are only 7 trained tasters in Panama. He was schooled in San Francisco where admission was a 'smell test' of 50 items, which might include rubber, wet dog, or olive oil. One must get 45 correct to be accepted into the school. The official tastings or 'cuppings' he described were like wines, with sensory, aroma, taste but spitting out, etc. 

The 'floaters' are still good coffee but are eventually made into instants, like Nescafe, which they joke should be 'no es cafe' (is not coffee!)