08/18/2026
This year’s Esmeralda Auction wasn’t just about the coffee, it was a tribute to Price Peterson’s 90th birthday, with the whole auction told in chapters of his life. Our lot, EA5 Gigante Pascua Washed, fell under “Chapter V: New Horizons” — the story of Price and Susan leaving Philadelphia for Boquete in 1973, taking over what would become Hacienda La Esmeralda. Half a century of one family’s devotion to a farm, distilled into 6kg of coffee that closed at $5,155/kg. We’re honored to bring a piece of it home to Houston.
Chapter 5: New Horizons
In the mid-1960s, Price’s father Rudolph Peterson, then president of Bank of America, started looking for a retirement ranch — small, rural, mountainous. He found it in the highlands of Chiriquí, Panama, in 1967. He never got to properly retire to it. By 1972, Price left his faculty post at Penn‘s medical school and took over the ranch full time.
In 1973, Price and Susan moved from Philadelphia to Palmira with their two young children, flying twelve Charolais cattle down from Texas in a cargo plane. A home isn’t made by moving somewhere. It‘s built slowly, by other people. Rosa Moreno helped run the household. Leoncio Guerrero taught Price how to actually farm. Neighbors, bankers, and friends helped a family with no Spanish and no local footing find their way.
The years that followed weren’t easy. Through the Noriega era, running a North American farm near the border came under real suspicion, including a day soldiers came for the family‘s radio, their only line to the outside world. Price got it back himself, face to face with the regional commander.
Long before Geisha, this was a cattle and dairy operation. A period of hard-won trial and error that shaped everything the farm became. We’re honored to have a piece of that story, in our cup.
We visit Hacienda La Esmeralda every year. These are from March. Lunch with Price and Susan at their house, fresh milk from their cattle farm, and stories from a life that’s now written across this year’s whole auction. Some relationships in coffee go back to a single shipment. This one
