Daniel Peterson
Daniel Peterson is a third-generation member of the Peterson family and, with his sister Rachel, runs daily operations at Hacienda La Esmeralda.12 He is best known for the obsessive lot-separation that revealed what the family’s Geisha could really taste like.
Story
Rather than blend the whole farm together, Daniel began keeping coffee separated by plot and altitude and cupping — that is, formally tasting and scoring — the estate’s lots one by one. This is how the family found that the Geisha growing high on the Jaramillo plot tasted like nothing else: intensely floral, tea-like, jasmine and bergamot. That separated lot became the entry that won Best of Panama in 2004 and sold for a then-record $21 per pound, launching the modern ultra-premium coffee market.3
To verify
Reported by a single blog and not independently confirmed here: that Daniel was born in Panama in 1974, that he began systematically cupping all estate coffees in 2002, and that this is what surfaced the lot marketed as the “Esmeralda Special”.4