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Grateful and proud I am. That with the Boats we provide so much delicious coffee, also together with the great coffee farmers of Panama.

The sound of the coffee berry
Yesterday in the webinar on Best of Panama coffee, I saw again some of Panama's most famous coffee farmers. It felt a bit like "coming home" to me: coffee mother Maria Ruiz, looking so beautiful and talking about the sound of the coffee berry that the picking experts of the Ngobe Bugle Indians can hear. Price Peterson, the grandfather of Panamanian Geisha coffee ...

From the many good entries, Barend Boot has randomly selected the winners of the wonderful coffee prizes made possible in part by Jura. Click here to see if you have won.

I have so many great memories and images. So I love to tell you about this coffee farmer and farmer's wife.

Ratibor and Tessie of Finca Hartmann are a couple and have just won first prize in "the Best of Panama" of the Geisha Natural. For years they seemed to keep a little distance from the coffee competitions. They are incredibly humble, introverted and very hardworking people.

Go to www.bootkoffiespel.nl and answer the 3 questions of the Boot Coffee Game and stand a chance to win a Jura E8 Dark Inox espresso machine + 1 year free coffee worth € 1585.00 or many other great prizes! Take part as often as you like! Do you know the right answers?

Just before the lockdown, I decide to travel to Colombia at the last minute for a coffee tasting as part of our Coffee for Peace project. I was invited to be the chief judge of a panel of experienced, articulate tasters. An honor and a pleasure, because I find discussing and interpreting flavor profiles together especially fascinating. The event is held at a beautiful hacienda not too far from Medellín. At the end of the coffee day, after about three days of intense smelling and slurping, there is the auction of the very best lots. In the auction room I find myself in a veritable Colombian pandemonium. In the back about sixty jubilant coffee farmers from picturesque villages like Caicedo and Urrao and in front about twenty somewhat bewildered international coffee tasters. And then the auction begins!

The new crop of Kachalu coffee is ready! It's February, an exciting time. In Colombia, the Kachalu cooperative has selected some specialty coffee lots for Boot coffee at extra high quality. This specialty quality is known among coffee nerds as "84+" (based on an internationally recognized standardized scoring system for the quality, taste and aroma of coffee beans). Boat coffee pays coffee farmers an extra bonus for higher quality coffee beans.