Specialty Coffee Wiki

Best of Panama

Properties3
descriptionPanama's annual green-coffee competition and online auction — home of the world's record coffee prices.
tagsauction, competition, panama, geisha
aliasesBoP, competitions/best-of-panama, auctions/best-of-panama

5 min read

Best of Panama

Best of Panama (BoP) is an annual green-coffee competition and online auction, run by the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama. It was founded in 1996 by pioneering producers from Boquete, Tierras Altas, and Renacimiento, during a stretch of historically low world coffee prices. By 2025 it had been running for nearly three decades.1

To verify

Sources give 1996 as the founding year but call 2025 the “29th” edition — those don’t fully reconcile (1996 → 2025 inclusive would be the 30th). A further data point: the 2019 auction is described as the “23rd”, which lines up exactly with 2025 being the 29th — so the edition numbers are internally consistent and imply a first competition in 1997, not 1996. Two further data points from the Mama Cata research both fit the same line: the 2020 competition is called the XXIV (24th) edition, and the official site calls 2026 the XXX (30th). Four independent edition numbers now agree on a 1997 start. Confirm the exact first-competition year before quoting either.

Format

  • Producers submit lots into three main categories: Geisha Washed, Geisha Natural, and Varietals (non-Geisha).
  • Lots are cupped blind — first by a national jury (~20 judges) that narrows the field, then by an international jury (22 judges in 2025). Deliberations are livestreamed.2
  • Winning lots go to a public online auction, where roasters and buyers worldwide bid per pound on small lots.
  • The auction itself runs on M-Cultivo’s CultivoCommerce platform — bestofpanama.auction carries the line “Made with CultivoCommerce” in its footer. The 2025 sale opened at 6pm Panama time on 6 August 2025 and published start times for seven cities across three continents, which is how bidders in Dubai, Beijing and Tokyo end up in the same room.3

Why it matters

BoP is the event that created the modern ultra-premium coffee market. In 2004, Hacienda La Esmeralda entered a separated Geisha lot that stunned the judges and sold for a then-record $21/lb — an absurd price at the time, and the moment everything changed.45

Records

YearLotPrice
12004Esmeralda Geisha (first Geisha entry)$21/lb
22005Esmeralda Geisha (Peterson family)≈ $350/lb (reported then-record)
32006Esmeralda Geisha Washed (Hacienda La Esmeralda)$50.25/lb reported — unconfirmed; see Best of Panama results archive
42007Esmeralda Geisha Washed (Hacienda La Esmeralda) — category win confirmed by the farm$130/lb reported for an “Esmeralda Especial” lot — unconfirmed, and may be from the farm’s own auction; see Best of Panama results archive
52017Esmeralda Geisha Cañas Verdes Natural, lot BOP-GN-01**601.00/lb** (60,100 for 100 lb) — buyer KEW Specialty Coffee Ltd; confirmed on SCAP’s official 2017 sheet6
62017”Sophia” — Finca Sophia, washed Geisha winner, lot BOP-GW-01**254.80/lb** (25,480 for 100 lb) — Saza Coffee & Aroma Coffee6
72019Elida Natural Geisha (Elida Estate)≈ $1,029/lb — Saza Coffee (Japan)–led consortium7
82024Elida Natural Geisha “Torre” (Elida Estate)$10,013/kg — Saza Coffee (Japan)
92025Esmeralda Washed Geisha, scored 98/100≈ $13,705/lb — world record
102025Esmeralda Natural Geisha≈ $10,709/lb — JD.com (China)
112025Esmeralda Laurina (Varietals)≈ $3,647/lb (buyer in Beijing)

For a fuller year-by-year table and the caveats on comparing across years, see Best of Panama results archive.

The 2025 record lot was only 20 kg, drew 549 bids, and went to Julith Coffee (Dubai) — roughly $604,000 for one bag of coffee. 2025 was also the first time in BoP history that judges awarded perfect 100-point scores (five judges, for the washed Esmeralda lot), and Esmeralda swept all three categories — a first — taking the Panama Cup (Best Producer of the Year) with it.

The natural Geisha lot went to JD.com, one of China’s largest e-commerce platforms — the first time a mass-market retailer, rather than a roaster or importer, took a top BoP lot. See China coffee market for why that matters.

As prices soar, SCAP is moving to trademark “Panama Geisha” as a protected brand.

To verify

Intermediate-year records for 2018 and 2020–2023 (e.g. the widely cited ~$803/lb in 2018) are commonly reported but not independently re-verified here. Check the official results pages at bestofpanama.org before quoting on camera. The 2024 figure is now corroborated by two independent reports and is recorded on Saza Coffee and Elida Estate.

Footnotes

  1. Best of Panama — official competition site ↩

  2. Best of Panama — about the competition and BOP protocol ↩

  3. Best of Panama — official auction site ↩

  4. World Coffee Research — Geisha (Panama) ↩

  5. Wikipedia — Geisha coffee ↩

  6. SCAP Panama — Best of Panama auction results 2001–2017 — confirmed via WebFetch; 2017 is the only year on that page published as readable text rather than a scanned image ↩ ↩2

  7. AgroNosotros — Elida Estate Gesha earns $1,029 per pound ↩

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