Finca Lérida: Discover the Legendary Panama Coffee Estate with 100+ Years of History

 A while ago, a friend mentioned a coffee estate to me during our conversation—Finca Lérida from Panama. I felt like I had heard the name before, but I had never actually tried their beans, let alone learned anything about them. Naturally, my curiosity kicked in, and I decided to look into it. When I opened their website and social media pages, I was surprised to see that their branding leaned toward “boutique resort.” After digging further, I realized that this place isn’t just a coffee farm—it’s also a boutique hotel. Honestly, this “all-in-one” Panamanian version of a farm-stay makes it even more appealing to a coffee lover like me.

Finca Lérida truly is a farm with a rich and distinctive history. Its founder, Toleff Bache Mönniche, came to Panama from Norway in 1907 as an engineer working on the Panama Canal (I even found old newspaper records showing his involvement in designing the dam!). He retired in 1924 and bought a small farm in Boquete with his wife. The land was purchased from a Spaniard who had named it after his hometown, Lérida, in Spain. Out of respect, Toleff kept the name and later used it for his coffee estate.

He personally built their Norwegian-style home—now the “Century-Old House” of the boutique hotel—where guests can still stay today. He also began planting coffee trees, fruits, and vegetables, and even constructed a water dam on the property to supply water to the coffee processing facility. Then came 1929—a moment that “forever changed coffee” for the estate. Their first batch of specialty coffee was exported to Germany, selling at four times the market price. That kind of premium, at such an early time, proved that coffee was more than just a commodity.
But why was Finca Lérida’s coffee recognized and valued so highly back then?

First, it benefited from its location. Sitting at an elevation of 1,600–1,835 meters in Panama’s Boquete region, the estate naturally enjoys ideal conditions for coffee cultivation. The area retains its original rainforest landscape and has long been protected. Toleff himself documented more than 500 species of birds and later donated his research to Chicago’s Field Museum. From the 1940s to the 1960s, the estate became a gathering place for naturalists and scholars drawn to its pristine cloud forests and pioneering coffee technologies. Toleff and his wife warmly welcomed these visitors.

Second, Finca Lérida introduced an innovative coffee processing device called the “siphon,” designed to separate ripe cherries from unripe ones. Toleff patented the siphon in 1936 but chose not to monopolize it; instead, he freely shared the invention with other coffee farmers—essentially open-sourcing it. This set a new standard for quality in the industry, one that still holds value today. At a time when people didn’t pay much attention to coffee quality, cherries were often harvested without sorting, and equipment for separating them didn’t exist.

We all know that ripe cherries and unripe or defective cherries have different densities, which allows them to be separated through buoyancy. Early versions simply used siphon tubes to draw the heavier, good cherries from the bottom of a container while leaving the floating defective ones behind. This pioneering method helped create a cleaner, more complex coffee flavor profile that the world had never tasted before.

Today, Finca Lérida is operated by the Chiari family. The estate mainly grows Caturra, Catuai, and Geisha varieties, processed through multiple methods. Although the family is not related to Toleff, they continue to honor his philosophy and spirit. Their team now includes more than 40 members, most of whom are local Boquete residents who navigate the land not by GPS, but by memory.

The estate now offers full coffee-experience tourism with on-site accommodations. Guests can walk through the century-old highland fields where the estate was born and breathe in the crisp mountain air.

You can also visit their coffee production center, where pure spring water from Panama’s Barú Volcano is used in every phase of coffee processing—preserving the unique terroir of the region. Visitors get to see the entire workflow of washed, natural, and honey processes, taste the differences, and hear the stories behind these methods and the farm itself, guided by knowledgeable hosts. They even offer a special Geisha tasting experience, where their baristas prepare the estate’s finest Geisha coffees for a private sensory session—an intimate encounter with floral, citrus, and honey-sweet notes.

As I explored the history of this century-old coffee estate, I felt deeply connected to its legacy—its natural gifts, its innovations, and the enduring charm that spans generations. It’s something truly worth admiring. And of course, it makes me even more eager to visit Finca Lérida someday and experience its magical terroir firsthand.