This is our second year working with Digna's Lost Origin coffee. This lot is thoughtfully crafted, specifically made with tremendous care and intentionality for our collaboration with Motors. In the cup we find strawberry Jolly Rancher, jasmine, and rose. Each box is hand-painted, making each one completely unique.
Gesha
Renacimiento, Volcán
1,450 masl
February 2026
From Franz at Lost Origin: "Fermentation was carried out in custom-built stainless steel tanks, guided by yeasts LOY-007P and LOB-001P. A fermentation medium was used at a volume of 103.3 liters, representing a 15% concentration. The process lasted 8 days under controlled conditions in an average temperature of 12.65°C (54.77°F). The coffee was dried over 18.3 days in temperature and humidity-regulated drying rooms."
Digna Nuñez is a school teacher in the town of Renacimiento who manages a small family farm. This is her second year selling cherry to Lost Origin, and we are glad to help bring her coffee to market again.
Lost Origin is a coffee makers' project in which members purchase cherry from producers and carry out processing in a lab setting. This is, to our knowledge, the most advanced project of its kind, and we are grateful for the opportunity to work with their coffee. Though we pride ourselves on sourcing washed coffees that are pure representations of terroir, we believe there is still much to be learned in this pursuit. We look forward to seeing where this project leads.
Gesha was originally collected from coffee forests of Ethiopia in the 1930's. From there, it was sent to the Lyamungo Research Station in Tanzania, and then brought to Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Central America in the 1953, where it was logged as accession T2722. It was distributed throughout Panama via CATIE in the 1960’s after its tolerance to coffee leaf rust was recognized. However, it was not widely planted because the plant's branches were brittle and not favored by farmers. Gesha came to prominence in 2005, when the Peterson family of Boquete, Panama, entered it into the Best of Panama competition and auction. It received exceptionally high marks and broke the then-record for green coffee auction prices, selling for over $20 per pound. Since then, the variety has become a resounding favorite of brewing and roasting competition winners and coffee enthusiasts alike.
The cost of getting a coffee from cherry to beverage varies enormously depending on its place of origin and the location of its consumption. The inclusion of price transparency is a starting point to inform broader conversation around the true costs of production and the sustainability of specialty coffee as a whole.