Willem Boot
Willem Boot is a Dutch-born coffee consultant, trainer and Geisha grower who sits on both sides of the trade at once: he teaches roasters and buyers how to judge coffee, and he grows some of the most expensive coffee in the world for them to judge.
He is best known for two things. First, Boot Coffee — the training and consulting company he runs from 619 Lindaro Street in San Rafael, California, which sells SCA-certified courses in roasting, barista work and sensory evaluation, plus consulting on green-coffee buying, espresso blends and roast profiles.1 Second, Finca La Mula, his Geisha farm near Boquete in Panama, whose coffee reached the top of the most-watched scoring list in specialty coffee.
The 97-point coffee
In 2015, JBC Coffee Roasters put a Finca La Mula Panama Geisha on Coffee Review’s Top 30 list at 97 points — the number one coffee of the year, selling at $59.95 for eight ounces.2 That is roughly $120 a pound at retail, already roasted, at a time when a very good specialty coffee sold for a tenth of that.
Coffee Review is a public review site that publishes 100-point scores, not a competition with a live auction like Best of Panama or Cup of Excellence. So a 97 there is a critic’s verdict, not a price discovered by bidders — which is why the number travels so far in marketing copy and why it is worth knowing which kind of number you are looking at. See Coffee scoring for how the 100-point scale works and what a point is actually worth.
Story
Boot’s public track record is built on being the person other people call. He is described as an international coffee consultant who has advised roasting companies, industry associations, development banks and governments, and he is a registered educator with the Coffee Quality Institute — the body behind the Q Grader licence. Most of the detail about his early life comes from bios he published himself, so it is flagged below rather than stated flat.
The farming side started in Panama. He was part of the founding group behind Finca Sophia in 2008 — the California-backed experiment in growing Geisha near 2,000 metres in Volcán — alongside Helen Russell of the San Rafael roaster Equator Coffees, partner David Pohl and farm manager Kelly Hartmann.3 Finca Sophia went on to win the washed Geisha category at Best of Panama in 2017 and 2020. That both Boot Coffee and Equator are headquartered in the same small California city is not a coincidence — this is a tight circle of West Coast roasters who chose to buy farmland instead of just buying lots.
Finca La Mula, his own Boquete-area Geisha farm, is the separate project that produced the 2015 Coffee Review winner.
He is also linked to two other estates — Finca La Cabra in Panama and Gesha Village Coffee Estate in the West Omo zone of western Ethiopia, a 471-hectare property with 341 hectares under coffee.4 Gesha Village’s own site is fronted by Adam Overton and Rachel Samuel and does not describe Boot as a founder, so his exact role there is unresolved (see below).
To verify — the source that carried most of this
Nearly all the biographical and competition claims in the engine research report trace back to a single Coffee Quality Institute educator profile at
coffeeinstitute.org/educators/willem-boot. That page returned 404,5 so none of the following could be confirmed at source and none should be quoted as settled fact:
- Best of Panama 2014, first place, for La Mula natural-processed Geisha. No independent confirmation found. Check the official bestofpanama.org results before repeating this.6
- Co-founder of Finca La Cabra (Panama) and helped start Gesha Village Estate (Ethiopia). Gesha Village’s live site does not name him as a founder, and gives the estate as 471 ha rather than the 400 ha in the report.
- “Highest ever score” for the 97-point 2015 result. Coffee Review’s own Top 30 confirms 97 points and the number one slot for 2015 — but not that 97 was an all-time record, and higher scores have been published since.
The exact lot description.Resolved. Coffee Review’s review text does describe an unusual maceration step — the ripe fruit soaked in slightly heated water before the fruit was removed — so the “maceration” label stands.7Ownership of Finca La Mula.Resolved. The Giesen page cited in the report still shows nothing about him,8 but Boot Coffee’s own farm update states it first-hand: “In 2005 I purchased some forested land on the slopes of the Baru Volcano near Boquete, Panama and that’s where we established Finca La Mula.”9
To verify — biography, self-published only
These come from Boot Coffee’s own 2013 bio PDF, a self-published source that could not be opened.10 Treat as the subject’s own account:
- Moved to the United States in 1998 and founded Boot Coffee.
- Roasted his first batch of coffee at age 14.
- Master’s degree in business economics from the University of Amsterdam.
- Co-owner of the family coffee company “The Golden Coffee Box” during the 1990s.
- Board member of the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) — the predecessor of today’s Specialty Coffee Association.
To verify — conflicts with what this wiki already says
- A $1,300/lb auction price for Finca Sophia. The engine report attributes this to a 2020 Boot Coffee article. The Finca Sophia note in this wiki states that no auction price for any Finca Sophia lot appeared in the sources consulted, and no source named a buyer. $1,300/lb would be an extraordinary figure — near Best of Panama record territory — so it needs the official auction results, not a company article, before it goes anywhere near a fact table. See Best of Panama results archive.
- A 95-point average at Best of Panama for Finca Sophia. The same article gives the score but no competition year, so it cannot be tied to the 2017 or 2020 win.
- Finca Sophia’s founding year. The report’s CQI source says 2009; the Boot Coffee article, SCAP, the farm’s own site and this wiki all say 2008. The weight of evidence is on 2008.
- Catherine Cadloni. The report names her as Boot’s wife and a co-founder of Finca Sophia; no other source consulted for that note mentions her.
Related
- Finca La Mula · Finca Sophia · Helen Russell · David Pohl · Kelly Hartmann · Best of Panama · Best of Panama results archive · SCAP
- Geisha · Hacienda La Esmeralda · Elida Estate
- Coffee Quality Institute · Q Grader · Specialty Coffee Association
- Coffee scoring · Cupping · Premiumisation · Natural process