The art of the bean
Boquete is as lush as Panama gets. The backdrop is one of heavy brush strokes building out a volcanic mountainscape. The colour green has never held as many shades and definitions as a hillside in the coffee highlands of Panama.
Ridges, peaks, valleys and clouds all play into the region’s lustre and vivacious life. New microclimates emerge with every twist and turn of the mountain roads, and as such, so do the philosophies of the farmers growing the coffee that Creativa Coffee District (CCD) purchases. The region is a quilted mosaic of thoughts and practices, each tile representing a farmer, their land and their personalized methods. When pulled back, a pattern: from its beginnings in the early 1900s to now, the highlands have been a source of inspiration and awe; an oeuvre in its own right.
In 2004, the Peterson family’s Hacienda La Esmerelda’s Geisha won Best of Panama for said variety, and set the then-record price per pound of coffee at $350. That price has grown consistently, year over year at the Best of Panama, a judged competition between farms showcasing the country’s quality coffees.
Naturally, Panamanian Geishas–or Gesha, depending on producer– have exploded on the specialty coffee market to the point that it’s almost unfathomable that a farm wouldn’t be growing the multi-award-winning variety. It’s unlike most other coffees– delicate notes of lemongrass and jasmine leap from the cup; its nuances lean more into the realm of tea’s orange blossom and bergamot, especially when processed, roasted and brewed thoughtfully.
What begins in the fields as a conscious growing and sustainably-driven practices shine through in the final product: everything from picking to roasting will further emphasize all the fruit’s attributes as well as its flaws. Farmers aim to support their crops through polyculture and shade trees rather than forcefully with monocrops and chemicals. Chemical preparations are fast acting and initially cheaper, but long-term they spiral out, wreaking havoc on plant life, the farm’s ecosystem and forcing dependency on their use. Once in that tailspin, it’s hard to pull out.
While somewhat more time consuming, less invasive actions of providing soil nutrients and pest protection benefit the land leading to healthier fruit from plentiful flowers. Forcing the roots to fend for themselves– with a helping hand of course– aids in creating a healthier and stronger tree that not only produces better cherry but is beneficial to the soil around it. Creating stronger and healthier root structures generates better soil structures, which allow for bug and microbe life to thrive; chemical processes whose job is to decimate all but the cash crop, lay waste to the microbiology of the soil, leaving a dead and desiccated soil. Utilizing conscientious farming methods leads to nutrient-rich and healthy soils.
Only from ideal growing conditions can a farmer distil the fruit’s profile, but picking practices matter too. Picking is a demanding job: hot days in the sun, highly-manual labour taking place upon steep hills, picking a cherry that doesn’t ripen evenly, meaning workers make multiple passes through each lot. The workforce, traditionally made up of nomadic and indigenous peoples are historically, poorly compensated for their efforts. Traditionally, this is not the sexy subject they hope to talk of when selling luxury and commodity crops, be it wine, coffee or cocoa.
Creativa’s focus as an entity is to shine a light on the darker parts of the coffee business emphasized through art. By portraying the inadequacies from farm to cup, CCD hopes to raise awareness and lay foundations for change. Maria Lucia Aleman, executive director at Panama City’s contemporary art museum, MAC, was brought on board to help spearhead the program and bring her knowledge of contemporary art to the table.
“This project wanted to talk about change and wanted to talk about a better world,” Aleman explaims. “In contemporary art you generate a lot of reflection. The artists are usually transmitting their vision of a topic through a certain theme and they communicate that with the viewer.”
Contemporary art’s aim is to critique and build upon the status quo. In regards to the coffee industry’s poor treatment of labour and the obfuscation of those truths, it was an ideal canvas for young contemporary artists. A passionate and lifelong art lover, Aleman jumped headfirst into the project, seeing a lot of parallels between the coffee industry and the art world: picking conditions are not that different than the conditions of the artist: “informal, no contracts, no access to healthcare. No fair payment for their work, the gallery gets a big percentage.”
Sensing these overlaps, Maria Lucia’s hired young Central American artists to work at the processing plant for two weeks, creating a contemporary piece highlighting aspects of the coffee industry that could be displayed at the facility’s gallery.
CCD was borne from the remains of the historic Beneficio Central de Café, a processing facility from the 1900s that bought any and all coffee from farmers in the Chiriqui region. Aleman saw the site and wanted to retain it all, seeing art everywhere. The architecture, the stoic and forgotten equipment, even the safety markings all represented a time and place, and hundreds of stories– each with different meanings to each viewer.
The beneficio’s history bears repeating: one of the oldest in the country, it housed Panama’s largest outdoor drying patio, something that Aleman recollected a lot of guests remembering from their youth. They recalled roller skating and playing on the patio while their fathers sold coffee to the beneficio. Lives were shaped and communities centered around the beneficio and what it represented to the area.
Stories like this literally shape CCD’s surroundings and make them look at their own aims through a different lens. Traditionally the beneficio would buy any and all coffee from farmers and produce quantities of low-grade commodity coffee. CCD looks to buy from partner-farmers, helping build a community in the area, all the while focusing on specialty coffee meant mainly for export– underpinning Panama’s quality-driven resource. One can imagine in the past the region’s farmers collecting upon the beneficio to sell coffee, share stories and farming know-how, supporting one another.
CCD sees bringing this back at the intersection of coffee and art as an important endeavor. Stories shape culture and community and build better relations between those involved in their creation and those who experience them. While the focus is on quality coffee and advancing the processes of fermentation on historic land, CCD is quick to acknowledge the culture from which they’ve been borne.
Partner-farmers sell their best fruit to CCD, who in turn passionately turn the fruit from fresh cherry to ready-to-be-roasted bean– though that’s hardly all the interactions entail; techniques are shared, suggestions on both ends made to better accommodate all parties. Learning from one another is paramount. In doing so, everyone grows, rooting deeper into the volcanic soils that make this region so incredible. Scouring for morsels, historic bites passed down through generations as well as nourishing notions of modern agriculture, they grow a leafset wide and full, capturing as much sunlight and energy to keep pursuing specialty coffee.
CCD’s nanolots are based in Geisha and the equally-delicious Pacamara, another quality-driven bean loaded with juicy citrus, raspberry, chocolate and florality. The canvas is naturally processed coffees: fermented with the bean’s external layers of mucilage and pulp still attached, which lend themselves to juicier and brighter fruit notes– exemplifying the altitude and climates of the Panamanian landscape and playing the perfect muse for any roaster.
Focusing on full cherry fermentation provides the final profile an elevated fruitiness, citrus-like acid and a lovely dried fruit complexity, something that has become CCD’s imprint upon each of its canvases. They focus on lengthy fermentations, be it open vessel for 48 hours, or anaerobically for 96 hours either at ambient or at a low temperature to slow the fermentation process. Each technique brings its own characteristics to the fore, highlighting more acetic or lactic notes, all the while showcasing the fruit’s origin.
From there, the cherry is moved to the drying patio-cum-roller rink to dry in the 50° sun for about twenty days. The pantone is one of ripe and mature fruit: deep rubies, burgundies and ochres sit upon the coffee processing facility’s palette– a sun drying patio in the heart of Chiriqui. The sun slowly dehydrates and desiccates the fermented coffee cherries until they’re a third of their former weight. The slow evaporation on the drying patio under the beating-down sun helps to accentuate the fruit’s natural sugars, acids and oils, creating a bean loaded with character.
When the patio is loaded with differing lots of beans from farmers throughout the area, the old and rusted equipment, lingering in the backdrop, it’s near-impossible not to be transported back in time to the beneficvio’s starting point. Though the business has exchanged hands and the philosophy has grown, the idea remains the same: to bring people together, discuss coffee and grow alongside one another. CCD becomes an art gallery in and of itself: the works of art are the products purchased from hard working farmers leaning into their tools and methods. Each piece is thought provoking, inspiring and helps to push the entire industry forward.