Specialty Coffee Wiki

Gesha Village Coffee Estate

Properties3
descriptionThe 471-hectare farm in far western Ethiopia that planted Geisha back where it came from — built from wild seed gathered 20 km away, and now the only estate in the world running an annual auction dedicated to Ethiopian Gesha.
tagsorigin, ethiopia, farm, geisha, auctions, west-omo
aliasesGesha Village, Geisha Village, Gesha Village Estate, Gesha Village Coffee Farm, origins/gesha-village-coffee-estate

12 min read

Gesha Village Coffee Estate

Gesha Village Coffee Estate is a 471-hectare coffee farm in the West Omo zone of far western Ethiopia, close to the South Sudanese border.12 It exists to do one thing: grow Geisha in the country the variety came from, using seed collected from the wild forest it was originally taken out of.

That makes it the single most important address in Ethiopian Gesha. Panama turned a plant from this corner of Ethiopia into the most expensive coffee on earth over seventy years; Gesha Village is the main attempt to bring the commercial value back to the origin. Almost everything documented about Ethiopian Gesha as a business runs through this one farm.

The basics

What it isa privately owned coffee estate, not a cooperative or a washing station
WhereWest Omo zone, far western Ethiopia, near the South Sudanese border12
Size471 hectares (about 1,160 acres)12
Actually planted320 hectares under coffee, per the estate’s own site3
Layouteight separate blocks, with 27% of the land left as natural forest23
Treesover 730,000 coffee trees, interplanted with native shade trees2
Altituderoughly 1,900–2,100 m above sea level, on a high plateau2
FoundersRachel Samuel and Adam Overton, who left creative careers in Los Angeles2
Key partnerWillem Boot, the consultant they built the project with12
VarietiesGesha 1931, Gori Gesha, Illubabor Forest, plus **[[SL28
Its own auctionPride of Gesha, run on the M-Cultivo platform4

Where the seed came from

The farm sits about 20 kilometres from the Gori Gesha forest — the wild coffee forest the Geisha variety is named after, which the estate’s own site places in the Bench Maji zone.3 That short distance is the whole point of the project.

The estate says its planting material was gathered from that forest, and that “historic expedition research and genetic testing” identify it as “the collection site of the Panamanian Geisha.”3 Two selections came out of it, and they are not the same thing:

  • Gesha 1931 — a narrow selection chosen to match the Panamanian Geisha plant, picked out by looking at tree shape, bean shape and cup.3 The name points at the 1930s, when the variety was first identified in the Gesha area.
  • Gori Gesha — deliberately the opposite: an heirloom selection meant to preserve “the genetic diversity within the Gori Gesha forest,” harvested on the estate’s own expedition in 2011.3

In plain terms, one is an attempt to grow the famous Panamanian plant at home, and the other is an attempt to keep the messy wild population that plant was plucked out of. Illubabor Forest is material from a different part of Ethiopia entirely, and SL-28 is a Kenyan selection — so even at the estate named after Gesha, not every tree behind the gate is Gesha.

To verify

The “collection site of the Panamanian Geisha” claim. This is the estate’s own account of its own land, and the “genetic testing” it refers to is not tied to any published study, laboratory or paper in the sources consulted.3 The broad story — Geisha collected from Ethiopian forests in the 1930s, then routed through Tanzania and CATIE to Panama — is well established and recorded on Geisha and Gori Gesha forest. That a specific forest 20 km from this farm is the exact collection point is not independently corroborated here. Treat it as the producer’s history, not as a settled scientific finding.

What it grows and how it is prepared

The estate presents the washed process as its signature approach — the sticky fruit layer stripped off before drying, which the farm frames as showing “the intrinsic qualities of the coffee bean,” meaning acidity and clarity rather than heavy fruit.2 But the auction lot list shows the full range it actually produces: washed, honey, natural and special-fermentation lots.4 See Washed process, Honey process, Natural process and Coffee fermentation for what each of those does to the cup.

One unusual thing is worth pulling out. Gesha Village splits its lots by how they were dried, not just how they were processed: dark-room dried versus traditionally dried.4 Drying coffee out of direct sunlight is slower and more expensive, and is done to protect delicate aromatics — it is a variable most farms do not sell on, and this estate treats it as a category of its own.

How a lot is traced back to a piece of ground

The eight blocks are not just a map — they are the unit the coffee is sold in. Cherries picked from each block are tagged to indicate their origin and followed by a tracking system the estate says it built in-house, from the mill through to export.3

The practical result is that a bag of Gesha Village on a shop shelf can name a piece of the farm, a single harvest batch, and one variety. A roaster listing from LCC Roastery carries the full chain: estate Gesha Village, sub-farm Surma, lot 46, Gesha 1931, washed, 1,909–2,063 m, producers Overton and Samuel.5 That is far finer resolution than most Ethiopian coffee reaches a buyer with — the country’s mainstream trade sells by washing station and region, not by named plot, which is the gap Ethiopian heirloom and Ethiopia Commodity Exchange both describe.

To verify

The block and sub-farm names. The estate’s own pages confirm eight blocks and per-block tagging but do not publish the blocks’ names.23 “Surma” as a sub-farm name comes from a single roaster’s listing, which does use that exact term — “This lot is coming from Surma sub-farm” — and is not corroborated by the estate or by a second independent seller in the sources here.5 Whether the estate’s eight blocks and the sub-farm names on retail bags are the same list of eight places is not established. The same listing also files the coffee under region Bench Maji,5 where the estate’s own front page says West Omo — the boundary problem already set out on Gori Gesha forest.

Pride of Gesha, the estate’s own auction

Gesha Village does not enter a national competition, because Ethiopia has no Best of Panama equivalent for this variety. Instead it runs its own annual sale.

Pride of Gesha is that sale, hosted on the M-Cultivo auction platform. Its 10th edition is scheduled to open at 7:00 pm New York time on 29 July 2026, with a one-hour first phase followed by a second phase on a three-minute countdown clock.4 The 2026 offering is:4

Lots34
By varietyGesha 1931 (28), SL-28 (4), Illubabor Forest (1), Gori Gesha (1)
By processwashed, honey, natural, special fermentation
By drying18 dark-room dried, 16 traditionally dried
CollectionsChampions Reserve, Farm Reserve, Gesha Noir1
Full sample setUS$750, including air shipment — 18 samples of 50 g and 16 of 100 g24

That is a private producer auction, not a judged competition: one seller decides what to offer, rather than a blind jury ranking many farms. The difference matters enormously when comparing prices — see Green coffee auctions and Echoes of the Peak for why the two keep getting confused in record tables.

No published prices, no published scores

There is nothing to report here, and that is a finding rather than a hole in the research.

No auction price, cupping score, competition placing or buyer name for any Gesha Village lot is published in any source consulted for this note. Pride of Gesha does not put up results. No Cup of Excellence, Alliance for Coffee Excellence or Best of Panama record names the estate. The enormous Geisha numbers people associate with the variety — the record prices tracked on the Best of Panama results archive — are Panamanian coffees, and belong to the variety’s descendants rather than to its home.

Buyers do exist and are visible on the retail side: Onyx Coffee Lab in the United States sells a Gesha Village natural under its own name,6 and LCC Roastery has sold a single named lot — Surma, lot 46, Gesha 1931, washed.5 Both name the estate and its producers on the bag, which is how the estate’s reputation travels. What either paid is not published.

To verify

When the farm was founded. The estate’s own story page says only that the farm was built “over the last eleven years,” on an undated page.1 Onyx, a buyer, says Gesha Village “was established in the early 2000’s.”6 Trade reporting cited on this wiki’s Ethiopian Gesha note dates the founders’ arrival in Ethiopia to 2007 and gives a secondary founding year of 2011 — which is also the year the estate says it ran its Gori Gesha collecting expedition.3 These cannot be reconciled into one calendar year from the sources here, and the difference between “early 2000s” and 2011 is not a rounding error. No founding year is stated as fact in this note.

To verify

How much of the 471 hectares is actually planted, and how many trees. The estate’s own Village page, fetched for this note, gives 320 hectares planted with coffee inside the 471-hectare total.3 But this wiki’s Ethiopian Gesha and Willem Boot notes both state 341 hectares under coffee, also citing the estate’s official site.1 Those two figures cannot both be current, and the 21-hectare difference is roughly a 7% swing in the size of the working farm — most likely a figure updated on one page and not another, or a replanting, but nothing consulted here says which. Separately, the Pride of Gesha site says over 730,000 trees2 while Onyx says about 700,000.6 Treat 320 ha as the best current estate-sourced number and the tree count as approximate.

To verify

Willem Boot’s exact role. The Pride of Gesha farm page frames Rachel Samuel and Adam Overton as the founders who then partnered with Boot as a consultant, describing his expertise as shaping their vision.2 This wiki’s Willem Boot note records that Gesha Village’s own site does not name him as a founder, leaving his role unresolved — and the story page fetched for this note reads as naming all three together.1 Founder, partner and consultant are three different claims, and the estate’s own wording is not consistent enough across pages to settle which applies.

To verify

The altitude. The estate’s own Village page gives a precise 1,909–2,069 m;3 its Pride of Gesha farm page rounds that to 1,900–2,100 m;2 Onyx gives 1,950–2,100 m;6 and individual lots have been sold at 1,909–2,063 m — both a Surma Gesha 1931 lot5 and a Gori Gesha lot recorded on the Gori Gesha forest note. The near-identical 1,909 floor across the estate’s own page and two unrelated roaster listings suggests one surveyed figure being passed along, so the plateau range is well supported; the differing ceilings (2,063 / 2,069 / 2,100 m) are not reconciled anywhere consulted.

Why it matters

Gesha Village is the test case for a question the whole Ethiopian Gesha category rests on: can an origin capture the value of a variety it gave away?

The farm has built the pieces Panama has — a named estate, distinct selections, controlled processing, an annual auction with international bidders on the same platform that runs Best of Panama. What it has not built, or at least has not published, is the other half of Panama’s apparatus: a public record of what its coffee scores and what it sells for. Ten editions in, that remains the gap between the two countries, and it is a documentation gap as much as a quality one.

Footnotes

  1. Our Story — Gesha Village Coffee Estate (official site) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8

  2. The Farm — Pride of Gesha (Gesha Village estate auction site) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14

  3. The Village — Gesha Village Coffee Estate (official site) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  4. Pride of Gesha — auction details and 2026 lot list ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  5. Ethiopia Gesha Village Surma Gesha 1931 Washed — LCC Roastery — buyer’s lot spec sheet, single-source for the Surma sub-farm name ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  6. Ethiopia Gesha Village Natural — Onyx Coffee Lab — buyer’s product listing; the page returned HTTP 429 when checked for this note ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

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