Eugene "Gene" Altieri, a New Yorker, moved to Panama in 1973 and bought the highland farm around 2005, partly to help friends who were losing their land to the banks in the coffee crisis, and at first with an eye on houses or a hotel. His neighbour Price Peterson of Hacienda La Esmeralda talked him into staying in specialty coffee and sold him his first Geisha trees, which went into the Dilgo plot.
The family group also ran office equipment and an ice plant.
About six years ago, with the office-equipment trade fading and the ice factory shut by pandemic rules, the family wound both down and converted the ice factory into the coffee mill.
Francisco Altieri leads the coffee today, from the nursery to the cup, with his sister Anna Lynn. Each Geisha block is named after one of the Altieri grandchildren, assigned by lottery, a slip of paper drawn from a cap: Luci, Chombi and Dilgo are three of them.
