Chris Kornman, Education and Lab Manager of The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room briefly discusses the fabled Gesha coffee variety, the evolution of the plant’s genetics and flavor profiles in anticipation of some new Crown Jewel releases. For more information on coffee plant types, check out this Roaster’s Guide to Understanding Coffee Plant Types also by Chris Kornman. Thanks to Stephanie Alcala for her work on Gesha diversity in her informative article “A Search from Within: Investigating the Genetic Composition of Panamanian Geisha.”
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Very Nice Coffee
when you use the word “variety”, are you referring to a specific mutation, region, climate etcetera? because you also refer to gesha as a “cultivar”. just curious about your having used both words.
also, has it always been pronounced geh-sha, or did it used to be pronounced gay-sha?
thanks for your time, and incredibly informative articles.
Good question, Joe. The two terms are technically distinct. Botanically, variety is a unique plant type found in nature, and cultivar is a “cultivated variety,” usually one that needs human intervention to replicate. Gesha trees in the forest in western Ethiopia would have been strictly speaking “varieties,” but once those selections were made by humans for cultivation, it could properly be called a cultivar. There’s a flowchart and further explanation on our blog here: A Roaster’s Guide to Understanding Plant Types
We’ve defaulted to spelling and pronouncing the word without the “i.” You can find some further reading on the topic in the eloquent words of Meister and Jenn Chen.
Excellent clip. Succinct and relevant. Thanks.
Stumbled on this video, when learning/searching more about coffee varieties (or is it cultivars? 🙂 ) – thanks for the introduction to the history of Gesha. I did not realise this variety had strong citrus notes. I don’t drink a lot of Gesha (financial reasons 🙂 ), but ones I tried were highly floral, even black tea. It was sold as Panama origin. Perhaps it was amateur ways of extraction.
Also thanks to several useful links. I am trying to build a relationship tree between cultivars/varieties of coffee, to improve the search results of beans sold by local specialty roasters in the UK. It is not as straightforward as I hoped 🙂 and genetics/parents information varies between different webpages.