Cup of Excellence Coffees


The Cup of Excellence™, was created in 1999. It is a program designed to help break the commodity/price cycle in the specialty coffee industry. It has two parts: a rigorous competition identifying the best single-origin coffees of a country’s harvest followed by a web auction of these coffees to coffee roasters worldwide. The competitions are held in the participant producing countries. Stringent three-stage yearly competitions are held in each of these countries to find the very best, specially prepared, boutique lots of coffee. The third stage of the competition involves an international jury composed of Specialty coffee buyers from around the world (judges from the 2002 Brazil competition, for instance, were from: Finland, Norway, Holland, France, Greece, England, Italy, the USA, India, Australia and Japan). Only a few lots win each year.

Not only has the Cup of Excellence™ competition highlighted and spurred developments in quality coffee production, but these coffees have also consistently fetched prices many times those available in the traditional market or through programs such as Fair Trade. Furthermore, a whopping 85% of the bid prices go to the farmers. Winners of these competitions experience their veils of anonymity torn away and their becoming sought after by competing quality buyers. Their neighbors and even their regions benefit from intensified interest and visits by quality-seeking roasters. Today competition/auctions are spreading, with Cup of Excellence™ leading the way, and are helping to improve the lives of farmers who invest in real craftsmanship. The Cup of Excellence™ is proving that the reward for quality can have a long-lasting effect in the struggle to achieve economic sustainability for coffee farmers.


COE Winner Fazenda Santa Helena II, Brazil



Next Roast September 20th!

Brazil Cup of Excellence 2009 winner Fazenda Santa Helena II from the region of Carmo de Minas in the southern section of the state of Minas Gerais, will premier this coming Tuesday, June 1, as our Limited Edition coffee. The international jury’s descriptors were “Aroma/Flavor- sugar cane, chocolate, honey, spices, toasted orange peel, plum, lychee, Acidity- bright crisp, tartaric, Note- plum, strawberry, creamy mouthfeel, sweet aftertaste, big body.” Jenny and I found the coffee to have a sugar cane – nutty honey flavor note.

Fine Brazils from the softly rolling mountains of southern Minas Gerais are sweet coffees with soft, delicate acidity. Their finest graded beans are often referred as “strictly soft.” The coffee has been milled using the pulped natural method, often referred to as “honey coffee” by specialty roasters these days. This involves stripping off the fruit’s skin, sun drying the beans, which are coated in mucilage, for twenty-four hours, and then mechanically drying them until stable (10 to 11 percent moisture content). The results are a very clean tasting coffee; absorption of the sugars from the mucilage gives the beans more dissolved solids, hence greater body in the cup. Enjoy!

Farm: Fazenda Santa Helena II
Region: Carmo de Minas, Minas Gerais
Variety: Yellow Bourbon
Process: pulped natural (“honey”)
Altitude: 3,100 – 3,500 feet
Rainfall: 70 inches, - moderate, seasonally well distributed
Size: 182 acres (25% of a Brazilian coffee farm must remain virgin forest)

Please Note:
1) Orders need to be placed for our Limited Edition Coffees by 8:00 am Eastern Time
2) Orders received will not be shipped until the ROAST DATE indicated per the schedule; and
3) Orders received that include REGULAR COFFEE items in addition to scheduled Limited Edition coffees will be shipped on the date that the limited coffee is roasted to minimize your shipping cost, UNLESS you leave a message in the Notes Box indicating you want us to ship your regular coffee separately.