Our Story
Soleil Coffee Travels to Panama for each harvest to select the finest coffee for our customers.
Our Story
Soleil Coffee Travels to Panama for each harvest to select the finest coffee for our customers.
Brand Story
Owners Solena and Jose Porras invite you to discover the unmatched flavor of specialty coffee from Panama. Jose’s childhood vacations in the Chiriqui Region of Panama and Solena’s love of coffee “sparked” the start of Soleil Brands LLC.
After twenty years of traveling to Panama with our children, we decided it was time to share these Panamanian coffees with the rest of the world. We embarked on a sourcing journey to find the finest beans. We quickly realized that this business is a labor of love, all the way from farm to cup.
We invite you to Taste the Spark of Panama through Soleil Coffee and experience the unique terroir from which it was grown.
Meet
Jose
Born and raised in Panama, José spent many of his summers in the coffee growing region of Boquete with his family. It was during this time that Jose recognized how special and unique Panamanian coffee is.
Meet
Solena
Part French. Early on, Solena’s mother, grandmother and aunts introduced her to the coffee culture in Brittany, France. Every breakfast, lunch, and sometimes, even dinner, was followed by chatter and a small coffee. Growing up, family and coffee became synonymous for Solena.
Panama Coffee
Panama’s terroir in the province of Chiriqui, like in wine growing regions around the world, has very special conditions for growing coffee due to its unique microclimates. Panama is different from the rest of Central America in that its geography runs east to west, and not north to south. There are two big valleys in the Chiriqui Region, one in Boquete and another in Volcan. Because of how the mountains are shaped, some of the winds that bring moisture to the soil come from the Atlantic Ocean and some from the Pacific Ocean.
There also exists a continental divide that is around 7 million years old containing several extinct volcanos that have left a rich variety of minerals all over Panama’s Pacific soil. This combination of different elevations together with the crossing winds and moisture creates ideal growing conditions for coffee. The different micro climates existing on a plot of land allow an array of cups from a single farm in Panama.
