Geisha or Gesha?

We recently received an email questioning the validity of the varietal name "Geisha" that we have listed on our Panama Esmeralda page. This particular emailer believed that we were perhaps confused with the Japanese Geisha, who are traditional Japanese artists that, in turn, are often confused for prostitutes.

We were told to use the word "Gesha" as it is "a small area in Ethiopia where grows a coffee variety that is only slightly evolved from the original wild coffee."

We are posting the following response, because there is obviously misunderstanding regarding this famous coffee varietal, and we just wanted to throw out some clarification regarding Geisha.

Our response:

On several occasions during the mid 20th century, coffees were distributed to national coffee research labs around the world under the name Geisha, or on occasion, these same varietals were labeled Abbyssinian or simply Ethiopian, but never Gesha.

While it is possible, perhaps likely, that this Geisha name is taken from a township named Gesha or Gecha, it is not certain. The coffees that have been distributed as Geisha have all come from Southwestern Ethiopia mostly from the Bench Maji growing area. Within this area, there is a locale called Geisha Mountain which is where the varietal planted in Panama known as Geisha is thought to have originated.

It should be noted that several distinct varietals (all labeled Geisha) were collected on this mission and one eventually made it to Panama. Other varietal selections from this region have also been planted in Malawi and Kenya under the Geisha name. The collections of varietals labeled Geisha were originally distributed to coffee research stations in Kenya and Tanzania where they were used in hybridization projects. Selections that showed good disease resistance were later distributed to other research stations around the world, notably India, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. These varietals were always identified as Geisha and not Gesha.

The Geisha varietal planted in Panama was brought from a research station in neighboring Costa Rica. It was planted and called Geisha in Panama, but due to its low yields, was afterwards quickly forgotten. It wasn’t until after the “rediscovery” of this varietal less than a decade ago that anyone had ever called it “Gesha,” and then it was only called that in speculation as to its origins.

The truth is that no one knows exactly where this varietal was originally collected or that its location will ever be known. Some people have speculated it comes from around one of 3 towns called either Gesha or Gecha on some English maps, but it is important to note that these spellings are all translations from Amharic. There is no agreed upon way of transliterating Amharic into Roman characters so we often see widely varied spellings of the same places and names. Yirgacheffe is a classic example of this. Depending on the source doing the translation, it may be spelled Yrgacheffe, Yergacheffe, Yirgacheffe or Yerga Cheffe. Because multiple translations of the possible originating locale this varietal may be named after, and for the fact that everywhere it has been planted for the past 75+ years has been labeled “Geisha,” we believe Geisha to be the better choice.

As to the assertion that the Geisha is only slightly evolved from the original “wild coffee,” we are unaware of any evidence that supports this. The Geisha varietal now being cultivated has had as much human-selective pressure as any other cultivar commonly planted. What is being grown in Panama is not straight from the wild forests of Ethiopia but the result of many successive generations of plants selected for their desired qualities, which for most of the 20th century was disease resistance, not cup quality. To say this varietal, or any coffee varietal, is somehow more or less evolved than another is unfounded since coffee species hybridize quite frequently in nature, and the various progeny from these hybrids are still evolving today, both from natural selection and selective, human pressure.