What is the definition of a geisha coffee, I read it a lot and see its supposed to be some kind of special, but really don't know what it means. Its not in the coffee glossary!

Gesha is a particular coffee variety, and heirloom variety originally from Ethiopia that was planted in Central America back in the '60s or so which became very popular and blew away COE competitions because of it's unique floral notes.

You can see a nice coffee variety tree diagram that Cafe Imports put together here on Sprudge: here. A top Google result from D Squared Java, Introducting the gesha fills in some of the gaps.

I understand that only the varieties planted on the Peterson family farm in Panama can properly carry the Geisha appellation, the other coffees are just referred to as the variety gesha.

yakster wrote:...

I understand that only the varieties planted on the Peterson family farm in Panama can properly carry the Geisha appellation, the other coffees are just referred to as the variety gesha.

I question that Chris. You can only refer to particular lots of theirs as "Especial" if retailing their Gesha but have never read where they have the corner on either term, "gesha" or "geisha." It is a variety of an heirloom coffee and I can't see any patent, registration or trademark around a variety.

Thank you both kind sirs, perhaps the difference is just in the spelling, or is it meant to be 2 different plants all together?

All Gesha/Geishas are a single coffee varietal introduced into Central America in the 1930s from a Kenyan nursery, which had produced it from Ethiopian seed stocks of unknown origin. It was initially widely planted because it was purported to have superior resistance to some of the then common coffee diseases. However, this was not true, so the varietal was never replanted. Nevertheless, some of it survived by growing from the berries of the originally planted trees. How much these trees changed and hybridized in the few generations since the 1930s is unknown.

The Peterson's discovered a stand of Geishas on their farm in 2005 (I think), and won the Panamanian COE hands down with a lot taken only from those trees. The lot also set a record at auction. The taste of the coffee was that of a southern Ethiopian coffees, but without the interfering tannin flavors usual in many southern Ethiopian coffees and with a very pleasant sweetness instead. So the hunt was on for these trees, and more were discovered in forgotten corners of central American coffee plantations. The resulting plantings are maturing now, so we are getting a lot of new Geisha/Geshas offerings.

"Geisha" is the actual name given to the coffee in the Kenyan nursery that exported them to Central America. People looking for the original varietal in Ethiopia speculated that the Geisha name was a misnomer for the Gesha province in Ethiopia, so they started using what they assumed was the correct version of the name, "Gesha." However, none of the coffee varietals located till now in the Gesha province are anything like the Geisha; so the Gesha name may be a complete misnomer, and the original nursery may have called it Geisha for some completely different reason.

Sadly, the Gesha name looks like it's sticking. Presumably, to those born every minute, it sounds more authentic.

I had a vague recollection of someone of the likes of Peter Giulliano explaining the Gesha / Geisha nomenclature, but I couldn't find it again when I went to look. It may have been an old tweet.

Who would guess, it doesn't seem to well documented exactly where it went, as the original importers of the plant kind of let them go it seems. I wonder if the plant looks that much different from S. American coffee plants/trees what ever they are called, they look like bushes in most pictures I see.
Interesting information though, very interesting. Thank you!

Wow, so it could be easily over looked by someone not knowing what they are looking at?