Panama BOP of the Year 2017 Super Summer is born!

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At 7: 00 a. M. Beijing time on July 19, the 2017 best Panama (Best of Panama, BOP) bidding began, and the world's biggest sellers competed fiercely for nearly six hours. Sofia, the first-time BOP champion, was sold by Japanese company SAZA Coffee at an astonishingly high price of $254.8 per pound. Sophia's laudatory name "Super Rose Summer" also happens to come from the company's owner, Taroh Suzuki, one of this year's BOP judges.

Sofia Manor background

In 2008, William Bout (Willem Boot) from the owner of Catova Manor Ricardo Gena (Ricardo Koyner)

He bought an extremely high-altitude manor named Finca Sophia, which is located in the town of Volcan in Panama.

Sofia Manor, at an altitude of 1900-2150 meters, is one of the highest coffee farms in Central America. From the day Sofia Manor was founded, William and his partners have been trying to explore the boundaries of the highest elevations where the world's top coffee is grown.

Named after Sophia, the goddess of wisdom in ancient Greek mythology, the Logo design comes from a kind of highland pigeon (called Torcaza in Spanish) that lives in the manor. The estate is jointly owned by William and his American partner, Equator Coffee Roasters, and is day-to-day managed by local coffee farm operators in Panama.

From wasteland to forest

The Sofia Manor is located in an area of forest degradation due to early development and intensive agricultural reclamation, adjacent to Nahra National Park, which straddles Panama from Costa Rica and is a park with rich ecological diversity.

Sofia Manor hopes to become a buffer zone between Nahra National Park and this dense agricultural area, where the owner has planted hundreds of native and environmentally friendly shade trees, as well as thousands of coffee trees. changed the original landscape and soil composition of the land in just 10 years. The singing of all kinds of birds is the best background music for the manor, and the local workers tell us that it is only since the establishment of Sofia that the birds have begun to return.

In addition, Sofia Manor has returned 15 hectares of wasteland and arable land to forest, and on the 4 hectares of land directly adjacent to the park, Sofia Manor will no longer be developed to maintain and protect this primeval forest. Drawing on the experience of Finca La Mula, William built a path along the estate and planted Mirto, a local tree species with well-developed roots, to prevent soil erosion.

Phoenix Nirvana

Before 2008, no one in Panama had ever planted rose summer at an altitude of more than 2000 meters, and even though William's team had previous experience of growing coffee on mule estates, traditional coffee growers in Panama found the idea unbelievable. they all persuaded him not to do such a "stupid thing". But William has his ambition. He must grow the best coffee in the world.

In 2009, he stubbornly planted the first rose saplings at the highest elevation of 2150 meters in districts 1 and 2 of Panama's Super Geisha Manor, becoming the first person to plant rose seedlings in such a high altitude area of Panama. he knew it would be difficult, but he did not expect that the reality would always be harsher.

In the Wakan region where Sofia is located, the temperature in the highlands can be as low as 10 degrees Celsius, dealing a fatal blow to the drought-resistant Rosa. Coupled with the high-altitude mold (called Derite in Spanish, often called Die Back), the Sofia estate was hit hard. In addition, the wind in the high-altitude mountains is strong, and the windbreak forest has not yet been fully formed in the first few years of the manor. coupled with the underdeveloped roots of the Rosa variety itself, many saplings have been uprooted. Before 2009-11, the first batch of rose summer was wiped out.

Sofia team

It's hard to imagine how frustrated Sophia's owners are, but William tells us that "persistence, patience and Persistance,Patience,Passion" is Sophia's spirit, so they decide to start all over again.

Sofia brought in well-known Costa Rican agronomists to continue to select seeds, raise seedlings, and select plants with developed roots and strong disease resistance to plant. In addition, it is necessary to ensure the nutrition of the plant, but also can not destroy the local ecological balance, only through the supplement of nutrient elements for organic fattening. For the removal of weeds, the use of fully artificial selective weeding, it is necessary to retain some non-invasive weeds in order to keep coffee trees warm. So in 2011, Sophia replanted from the location of the manor area 3 and 4, and removed the saplings that could not survive in area 1 and 2, and replanted them one after another.

cut a striking figure

The high altitude environment gives coffee a slower growth cycle, and in the fifth year of replanting, a small amount of coffee cherries began to appear at Sofia Manor, which weighed only 50 pounds after harvest. After the test, William's team felt that although the flavor was not in the best state, it had already performed well, so they sent the sample to the United States to participate in the competition and won the 2015 Good Food Award award.

Although Sofia's rose production has increased by 2016, it is not enough to meet the requirements of mass production. William, with a keen marketing acumen, decided to sell Sofia Rosa by its partner Equator Coffee Roasters in US stores for $15 a cup, while a Starbucks in the US costs about $3-4. Such a high price has caused an uproar in the American boutique coffee market, but its excellent quality has also set off an upsurge in the American coffee market, which has been reported by the media.

The queen ascends to the top

Because Sofia Manor was originally used for growing vegetables, the soil is fertile, and the content of potassium and phosphorus is extremely high, which brings lively acidity to coffee, coupled with the long growth cycle of shade trees in high altitude and primeval forest, the flavor of coffee is rich and delicate. The flavors described by the judges include intense aromas of orange blossoms, peach, ripe grapes, blackcurrant, bright citrus acid, berries, bubble acidity, syrup and a lingering finish.

There was an episode in the preliminary round of washing Rose Summer. During the discussion, a senior judge in the United States questioned that this coffee, which received a high score of 93 + from 12 judges, should be a honey-treated coffee. Because of its complex flavor and high sweet-sour balance, people suspect that this is not the taste of the coffee itself, but the flavor brought by the treatment, but it turns out that this is a rosy summer treated with complete washing. All the amazing flavors come from the plants themselves.

BOP Review Voting

The rich and strong flavor of Sofia Rosa is extremely rare, which is why William decided to fully display the flavor of the coffee beans through complete washing. In 2017, when Sophia took part in the BOP competition for the first time, she won the championship of the BOP Rose Summer washing Group by an overwhelming margin. All the international judges unanimously called it "Super Rose Summer". Ric, the chief judge and president of the boutique Coffee Association (SCA), called it the best coffee he had ever had. Sophia Rose Summer became a veritable queen.