Finca Saza

Finca Saza — the company writes it “サザコーヒー農園 / Finca Saza Coffee” — is a 25-hectare coffee estate in Timbío, in Colombia’s Cauca department, at 1,950 metres above sea level, planted with about 80,000 coffee trees (Saza Coffee — サザ農園について, accessed 2026-07-23). It is owned and run by Saza Coffee, the Japanese roastery in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki.

It matters because of who owns it. Saza Coffee is the company that led the buying group for the first coffee ever to sell above $1,000apound\ast \ast ,andthatpaid\ast \ast$10,013 a kilogram for a lot in 2024 — both from Elida Estate in Panama. Finca Saza is the other half of that business: the land where it grows coffee itself instead of bidding for someone else’s. Very few companies do both.

Story

A Japanese café chain buys a Colombian hillside

The estate began as a personal project of Yoshio Suzuki (鈴木誉志男), the chairman who turned his family’s cinema business into a coffee company — he wanted to make coffee “with his own hands” rather than only buy it. Saza’s own timeline says the farm was opened in 1997 with 5 hectares in Timbío, at the foot of the Andes (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23).

His son Taro Suzuki — a trained fruit-tree horticulturalist who interned with Colombia’s national growers’ federation, the FNC — took over running it, and is the person most associated with the farm today.

Growing, in two jumps

Saza’s timeline puts the expansion in 2008, when it added 20 hectares and took on Edgar Moreno, a former FNC quality director, as a partner on the ground. The same timeline also records a further 21 hectares purchased in 2011 (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23). Those two figures do not both fit inside a 25-hectare total — see the To-verify note below. The second block is the parcel that appears elsewhere as “Finca Los Tres Edgaritos.”

Then the rust arrived

From 2009, Coffee leaf rust spread through southern Colombia, and from 2010 Saza put the farm through a large-scale varietal renovation — tearing out and replanting to varieties that could survive it (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23).

That is not a Saza-specific misfortune. The 2008–2013 rust epidemic wrecked yields across Colombia and Central America and forced exactly this decision on tens of thousands of farms: keep the delicate old varieties and lose the crop, or replant with resistant ones and change what the coffee tastes like. See Coffee leaf rust for what the epidemic did region-wide.

What grows there

Saza lists three varieties on the farm page (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23):

• Typica — the oldest cultivated Arabica lineage, prized for cup quality and famously fragile.
• Bourbon — the other founding variety, sweeter and slightly higher-yielding.
• Geisha — the Ethiopian-origin variety that made Panama famous, and the one Saza exports under the Finca Saza name.

All three are susceptible to leaf rust, which makes the choice worth noticing: after replanting a rust-hit farm, most growers move toward resistant hybrids like Catimor or Sarchimor. Saza’s published variety list points the other way — towards the varieties that cup best and get sick easiest. That is a quality-first bet paid for by a Japanese retail business, not by the farm’s own margins.

The farm sits at 1,950 m, which Saza describes as the edge of where coffee survives at all — “living or withering, at the very limit.” The reasoning is standard and sound: cold slows ripening, slow ripening concentrates sugar, and a stressed plant on a thin crop makes a sweeter cup than a comfortable one.

How the coffee is made

Saza says it picks fully ripe cherries only and sun-dries them (天日干し) (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23). The exported lot is sold as Finca Saza Colombia Geisha (Washed) (Ibaraki Prefecture export register, as recorded on Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23).

“Washed” and “sun-dried” are not a contradiction, which trips people up. In the Washed process the fruit is stripped off and the seed fermented clean before drying begins; the drying then still happens outdoors under the sun. It is the opposite of the Natural process, where the whole cherry dries with the fruit still on.

Notable lots / records

Year	Result	Competition	Score	Price
2017	Won (company’s own claim)	An unnamed Cauca departmental coffee competition	not published	not published

That single row is the entire competition record that could be documented, and it comes only from Saza itself — the farm page and a 2020 company video both mention a 2017 departmental win without naming the organising body (Saza Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23; Saza Coffee, 2020 video).

No cupping score and no auction price exists for any Finca Saza lot in anything consulted here. There are no ACE, SCA or CQI records listing the farm as a competing producer or auction seller. That is the honest shape of this farm’s record, and it is worth stating plainly because Saza Coffee’s reputation is built entirely on prices it paid in Panama — figures that have nothing to do with the coffee it grows in Colombia.

Finca Saza also cannot appear in Best of Panama, which is restricted to Panamanian producers. Where the two do meet is in a single retail product: the Geisha Hunter 5P blend, which combines Geisha from Panama, Ethiopia and Colombia — the Colombian third being Saza’s own (Taro Suzuki).

To verify

The hectares do not add up. Saza’s own timeline says 5 ha in 1997, +20 ha in 2008, and +21 ha in 2011 — which totals 46 — while the same page states the farm is 25 hectares. The Japanese Wikipedia entry for the company records 5 ha in Cauca plus “Tres Edgaritos,” 21 ha, 2011, which does total ~26. The likeliest reading is that the 2008 “+20 ha” and the 2011 “+21 ha” are the same parcel described twice with different dates, but no source says so. Treat the estate as “roughly 25 ha, acquired in two stages” and do not cite the individual expansion figures as separate additions.

To verify

The founding year: 1996, 1997 or 1998. Saza’s farm page says the farm opened in 1997; a Japanese coffee site says chairman Yoshio Suzuki bought it in 1996; a 2020 Saza video says “since 1998.” All three trace back to the company. The Saza Coffee note currently carries 1996 (from Japanese Wikipedia) and Taro Suzuki carries “managed the farm from 2008.” This note uses 1997 as the most formal published date but the discrepancy is unresolved, and no Colombian land record was consulted.

To verify

The sub-farm’s name and the farm manager. The 21-hectare parcel appears as “Finca Los Tres Edgarito(s)” in a Japanese coffee article, as “Tres Edgaritos” on the Japanese Wikipedia entry for the company, and as “Tres Edgardito” on the Wikipedia entry for Taro Suzuki. The same Japanese article names the farm manager as Fabian Garcia; that page could not be fetched from this machine (it returned only a site navigation menu, 2026-07-23) and no second source names him. Treat both the spelling and the manager as unconfirmed.

To verify

The altitude: 1,900 or 1,950 m. The corporate farm page says 1,950 m; in a 2020 company video Saza’s Colombian partner says the farms sit “at an approximate altitude of about 1,900 metres.” These are compatible if the estate spans a range across two parcels, but no source gives a range. Quote ~1,900–1,950 m rather than a single figure.

To verify

Finca Saza is not Finca Zarza. Research on this topic repeatedly surfaces Finca Zarza, a Colombian farm associated with the Bombona estate and sold by European traders with an SCA score of 90.8. Nothing connects it to Saza Coffee or to Timbío — the names simply look alike in Latin script. Do not attach that 90.8 score, or any Finca Zarza lot, to this farm.

Why a roaster owns a farm at all

Buying the land is the expensive way to solve a problem every quality-focused roaster has: you can pay any price you like for a lot at auction, but you cannot tell the grower what to plant three years before the harvest.

Owning 25 hectares means Saza chooses the varieties, decides when to pick, and controls the drying — and it also means carrying the losses when leaf rust arrives, as it did in 2009. What it buys in return is not a cheaper cup. Saza’s Colombian Geisha ships as a single-serve drip bag with a three-year shelf life, a supermarket-and-souvenir product; the auction Geisha is poured at ¥3,000 a cup. The farm supplies the everyday end of the range, and the auctions supply the headline. See Premiumisation and Japan coffee market.

It also makes Saza one of very few Japanese companies farming its own coffee in Colombia — though the company’s stronger claim, that it is the only one, is flagged as unverified on Saza Coffee.

Related

• Saza Coffee — the Japanese roastery that owns the farm
• Taro Suzuki — the horticulturalist president who manages it · Edgar Moreno — the ex-FNC quality director who partnered on the 2008 expansion
• Geisha · Typica · Bourbon — what grows there · Catimor · Sarchimor — the rust-resistant varieties it did not replant with
• Coffee leaf rust — the epidemic that forced the 2010 replanting
• Washed process · Natural process — how the exported Geisha is prepared
• Federación Nacional de Cafeteros — Colombia’s growers’ federation, where both Suzuki and Edgar Moreno trained
• Elida Estate · Best of Panama — where the same company buys instead of grows
• Cupping · Coffee scoring — the scoring this farm has no published record in
• Finca Solidaridad · Finca Sophia — other roaster- or outsider-founded estates
• Japan coffee market · Premiumisation

Official links

• Official site — Finca Saza (サザ農園), Saza Coffee’s farm page
• Official site — Saza Coffee (サザコーヒー), the owner

Sources

1. Saza Coffee — サザ農園について / FINCA SAZA COFFEE (official farm page) — accessed 2026-07-23
2. Ibaraki Prefecture export register — SAZA COFFEE ROASTER INC., “Finca Saza Colombia Geisha (Washed)” — accessed 2026-07-23 (returned a database error on re-check this date; content as recorded on the Saza Coffee note)
3. Saza Coffee — official corporate site — accessed 2026-07-23
4. Wikipedia (Japanese) — サザコーヒー — accessed 2026-07-23
5. Saza Coffee — 【2020年 コーヒー生産地のいま】サザ農園の取り組み【コロンビア自社農園】 (company video) — cited in the research report; not independently fetched
6. コーヒージャーナル — サザコーヒー：コロンビア サザコーヒー農園 ゲイシャ — accessed 2026-07-23 (returned only site navigation; article body not retrievable)
7. Touton Specialty Coffee — Finca Zarza, Bombona Estate — cited in the research report for disambiguation only; a different farm
8. Coffee Gems — Finca Zarza, Colombia (SCA Score 90.8) — cited in the research report for disambiguation only; a different farm