Ninety Plus coffee lies at the intersection of innovation and veneration. Inspired by the coffee traditions of Ethiopia, we are grounded in lessons from history while simultaneously refining our farming practices and advancing our processes and methods, ethically and sustainably producing some of the best coffee in the world.
ORIGINS
Coffee is thought to have been discovered in the Kaffa region in southwestern Ethiopia over a thousand years ago, where heirloom coffee still grows wild in the shade of the forest canopy. From there, coffee spread first to the Arabian Peninsula and then throughout the world.
Ninety Plus also originated in Ethiopia. Passionate about coffee since young adulthood, Ninety Plus founder Joseph Brodsky moved to southern Ethiopia in 2006 to hand-make coffees alongside local producers, classifying the varieties and terroir that produced the best coffee, establishing controls on post-harvest protocols, and developing innovative processing methods to achieve singular flavor profiles.
It was in Ethiopia that Joseph also learned about Panama as a potential coffee growing paradise, particularly the cloud-forest highlands around Volcán Barú.
EXPLORATION
Benefitting from competing ocean breezes, mountainous terrain, abundant rainfall, and nutrient-dense soil, Joseph found that the mountains of Panama represent some of the best coffee-growing terroir in the world.
Gesha Estates, Ninety Plus’ first Panamanian farm, is wild and in places unforgiving, with steep slopes, abundant wildlife, and turbulent waterfalls. In other places, however, it had been nearly destroyed. A former cattle ranch, hundreds of acres had been clear-cut to create grazing lands. Guided by Joseph’s passion for ecological regeneration, the Ninety Plus team spent years reforesting the land with native trees before planting shade-loving Ethiopian Gesha coffee trees beneath the forest canopy, spacing them far apart to reduce nutrient competition and to leave room for other forest species to thrive.
Joseph came upon the location for the second farm, Barú Estates, while hiking in the area north of the town of Volcán. Hidden on one side by a low ridge and on the other by Volcán Barú itself, this land sat largely untouched for decades. Inspired by its large flat plain–the result of the volcano’s most recent eruption–dense jungle, and dramatic ridges, Joseph soon acquired this property to support Ninety Plus’ next phase of innovation and growth.
INNOVATION
We believe that the best coffee in the world can only be made by cultivating a deep understanding of nature, a communion that requires unwavering ecological respect and that ultimately sparks innovation and growth. It is through this relationship that we are able to hand-select the most prized Gesha and other Ethiopian heirloom coffee varietals, successfully apply ancient low-density farming techniques, explore the cultivation of experimental heirloom coffees, and develop boundary-pushing processing techniques.
We believe we have found the secret to ethical, sustainable, and innovative coffee farming and production, and we’d love to share it with you.