In Panama, coffee does not simply appear in a beautiful bag with the word Geisha printed on it and a price that makes you wonder whether you accidentally bought champagne.

Before it reaches a café, a supermarket, or your morning cup, that coffee has already gone through a surprisingly long journey. And in many of Panama's best coffee producing regions, especially in the highlands of Chiriquí, that journey begins in a remarkably simple way:

someone picks the coffee by hand.

Coffee grows on trees

Well, technically, coffee grows on shrubs rather than traditional trees.

The plants produce small fruits known as coffee cherries. When they are young, they are green and firm. As they mature, they usually turn red, although some varieties can become yellow, orange, or other colors.

And this creates a problem for anyone trying to harvest them.

Not every coffee cherry on the same plant ripens at the same time.

A single branch can have perfectly ripe cherries sitting next to green ones that still need weeks to mature.

That is why high quality coffee is often harvested by hand.

Instead of simply stripping everything from the plant, workers carefully select the cherries that are ready.

Why not just pick everything?

Because green and overripe cherries can affect the quality of the final coffee.

The goal is to harvest the fruit at the right stage of ripeness.

That means workers have to examine the plants carefully and choose which cherries are ready to be picked.

It sounds simple.

It isn't.

Imagine walking between thousands of coffee plants and constantly making decisions about individual pieces of fruit:

"That one is ready."

"That one isn't."

"That one definitely isn't."

"Wait, that one is."

After several hours, you may develop some very strong opinions about the color red.

Coffee picking is physical work

Many of Panama's coffee farms are located in mountainous areas, particularly around places such as Boquete and Volcán.

This means harvesting isn't usually a matter of walking across a perfectly flat field.

Workers can spend hours moving through steep terrain, between rows of coffee plants, carrying containers while working in the heat, humidity or rain.

Many pickers use baskets or containers attached to their bodies so that they can keep both hands free.

They move from plant to plant, carefully removing ripe cherries.

When the container is full, the cherries are transferred into a larger collection container.

Then they go back to work.

And repeat.

The mountains make a difference

Panama's highlands are particularly famous for coffee production.

The combination of altitude, cooler temperatures, volcanic soils, rainfall and local climate can have a major influence on the characteristics of the coffee.

And Panama has one particularly famous card up its sleeve:

Geisha coffee.

Panamanian Geisha has become one of the world's most celebrated specialty coffees and has achieved extraordinary prices at international auctions.

But before it became a luxury product capable of commanding eye watering prices, it was simply a little coffee cherry growing on a plant in the mountains.

The people picking the coffee matter

When people buy specialty coffee, they often think about the farm, the variety, the altitude and the roasting process.

But there is another crucial part of the story:

the picker.

Poor harvesting can result in green, damaged or overripe cherries being mixed with the good ones.

Careful harvesting gives the producer a much more consistent starting product.

For high quality coffee, the goal isn't simply to collect as much fruit as possible.

It is to collect the right fruit.

What happens after the cherries are picked?

Once the cherries arrive at the processing facility, you still don't have something that looks remotely like the coffee beans in your kitchen.

You have fruit.

Inside each coffee cherry are usually two seeds. These are the seeds that will eventually become the coffee beans we know.

The fruit has to be processed to separate those seeds from the surrounding pulp.

There are several different methods.

With the washed process, much of the fruit is removed and the coffee undergoes fermentation and washing before drying.

With the natural process, the entire coffee cherry is dried with the fruit still surrounding the seed.

Then there is the honey process, common in Central America, where the skin and some of the fruit are removed while some of the sticky mucilage remains around the seed during drying.

These different methods can dramatically influence the eventual flavor of the coffee.

Then comes the drying

After processing, the coffee needs to be dried carefully.

The beans may be spread across patios or placed on raised drying beds where air can circulate around them.

This stage requires patience.

Drying too quickly, too slowly or unevenly can cause quality problems.

Producers need to monitor the coffee and move it when necessary to ensure that it dries properly.

It is easy to forget how much work goes into coffee when all you see is a steaming cup sitting on a table.

The harvest requires multiple passes

Another fascinating part of coffee harvesting is that workers may need to return to the same plants several times during the season.

Remember, the cherries don't all ripen together.

A cherry that was green during the first pass might be perfectly ripe when the workers return later.

This is one reason specialty coffee production can require so much manual labor.

The plants essentially set their own schedule.

And the humans have to follow it.

From a mountain in Panama to your cup

When you drink coffee in Panama, particularly coffee grown in the highlands of Chiriquí, you're tasting the result of much more than a roasted bean.

You're tasting the combination of altitude, climate, soil, variety, farming, harvesting, processing, drying, storage and roasting.

But it all begins with a small fruit growing on a plant.

And the next time you visit a coffee farm during harvest season, take a moment to watch the people picking the cherries.

It might look like they are simply walking through the trees and pulling little red fruits from the branches.

But every one of those cherries is the beginning of a long journey.

From a mountain in Panama, through many hands, and eventually into a cup of coffee somewhere in the world.

And considering what some Panamanian Geisha coffees can sell for, the next time you take a sip, you might want to slow down and appreciate just how much work went into that little cup.