BeanScene Magazine

I hadn’t been as excited as I was at the beginning of May for a long time.

A decade in coffee had opened many doors for me to spend time with many lovely people across Australia and the world. During that decade, the Cup of Excellence (COE) competition had grown from being a novelty, to being recognised as the premiere program for the discovery, recognition and support of the production of some of the world’s best coffee. And, I had been lucky enough to score an invitation to Cup of Excellence El Salvador!

The Program

The Cup of Excellence competition started off in Brazil in 1999 and generated scepticism from both coffee buyers and coffee producers. Sitting in El Salvador, Susie Spindler, the director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the company that runs the Cup of Excellence competition, recalled that some of the producers even asked to be prepaid the prevailing commodity price before entering their coffee! That year, the top lot fetched $US2.60 per pound; about double the prevailing commodity price. In today’s terms, that doesn’t sound impressive, but the competition was judged a success.  In the past 10 years, the competition has been rolled out to nine countries and the top lots routinely fetch 10 to 20 times the prevailing commodity price.

COE’s success is no doubt due to the rigour of the competition process. Coffee producers are invited to submit samples representative of a small auction lot for free for evaluation by a national jury of coffee cuppers from the producing country.  The jury undertakes a blind cupping of the samples and those coffees scoring 84 or above advance to the second round of cupping.  Broadly speaking, coffees scoring below 80 or above are clean, sweet and free of defects, but perhaps not distinctive. 

Coffees scoring 84 or above are clean, sweet, free of defects and have some sort of distinctive flavour reflective of the factors in their processing, such as varietal, terroir and processing techniques. It is these lots that are stored in a bonded warehouse for the international competition. An independent auditor draws representative samples from the lots stored in the warehouse and assigns them codes. These coded samples are then roasted and evaluated by the international jury. At any stage, if a coffee scores below 80 or shows a major defect such as a phenolic fault, it is eliminated from the competition.

The Country

When invited to a COE competition, El Salvador was my first choice of destination.  At about a tenth of the land area of Victoria, Australia and exporting about a million bags of coffee in 2009 according to the ICO - compared with Brazil’s 40 million bags in the same year - El Salvador is tiny. In terms of coffee quality, though, El Salvador is a giant.  The bulk of El Salvador’s coffee is either the heirloom bourbon varietal or the pacas cultivar, which is a derivative of bourbon developed in El Salvador.

These bourbon varietals tend to deliver very sweet cups, with fairly heavy body and a restrained acidity, ideal for espresso. In fact, I have great memories of tasting coffees from the Santa Elena farm to ultimately be used in the blend that our own David Makin used to finish second at the World Barista Championships in Copenhagen. In many areas, bourbon fell out of favour and was replaced by hardy, high-yielding dwarf cultivars - small size being prized for ease of harvesting. In El Salvador’s case, its unfortunate political history presumably provided a distraction from this trend. A very small portion of El Salvador’s coffee production is the pacamara cultivar, a cross of pacas and maragogype developed in El Salvador. This coffee delivers a totally different cup than the bourbon coffees, typically having higher acidity, lower body and a preponderance of enzymatic flavours.

At their best, pacamaras deliver a stunningly fruited and floral cup, reminiscent of a wet processed Ethiopian coffee. At their worst, pacamaras deliver a dull cup with a coarse, dry finish and a raw onion flavour. Given the care with which many of the country’s coffees are processed, the proliferation of good agricultural practices and the suitability of the bourbons for espresso and the pacamaras for interesting brewed coffees, El Salvador seemed to me to be of great interest for the Australian coffee market.

The Competition

My few days in San Salvador provided a very brief glimpse of themes that would repeat themselves in the days to come.  First, the Salvadorean coffee council, the Consejo de Cafe, had gone to great lengths to ensure that the competition ran smoothly and that we were all well looked after. 

Second, a quick trip to the local cafe Viva Espresso gave a glimpse at the diversity and quality of Salvadorean coffee. The store proudly boasted of its barista’s recent 9th place finish in the World Barista Championship, while the offerings board listed five or so different coffees - all Salvadorean! Finally, lunch at a barbecue restaurant featured beans, rice, yams and potatoes - the Italian side of me was in carbohydrate heaven.

Once the international jury had gathered, we left San Salvador behind to head to the site of the competition, a hotel in the Apaneca-Ilamatapec, in among some prime coffee growing land. The week long program had been carefully crafted to allow sufficient time to do the coffee justice, with five days of coffee cupping in a row.  The first day of cupping was a calibration, featuring three tables of ten samples that were not part of the competition. It was surprising to see how close together most of the scores were and by the end of the final calibration round even the most timid jury members were scoring coffees with confidence. 

The second day marked the beginning of the competition proper, with the first round of tasting of the 47 coffees that had passed the national jury. Tasting table after table of stunning coffees was quite an experience, affording a glimpse into what one can only hope a standard table would offer if good farming and processing practices were to spread. Unlike in a typical cupping of green brokers’ offerings in Australia, there was no hint of defects arising from shipping and storage, such as bagginess and mustiness.

The coffees were all fresh, sweet, clean and vibrant, offering a true reminder the coffee was an agricultural process. This was particularly evident for the pacamaras, which I have often found to be quite faded and dry in Australia. The roast level was chosen to strike a balance between allowing lighter fruit flavours to shine through and developing nuttier roast flavours.  A number of coffees stood out as unusual, including one that had a bright berry quality reminiscent of a Kenyan coffee and one with a citric acidity and wild fruit flavours. Along with the good came a little bad and a few coffees were eliminated. 

The fourth day saw the beginning of the second round of cupping and the jury was particularly conscious to take a stance on which coffees should stay in and which should be eliminated.  One cup showed a flavour reminiscent of blueberry and water dripping from a garbage bag; this was considered to be a fermented defect and the coffee was eliminated.  Another cup showed a similar flavour, though there was no hint of an unclean cup; it delivered redcurrant jelly and rose, scoring well.

At the end of the day, 30 of the initial 47 coffees remained in the competition. There was a clear break of almost a whole point between the top ten and the bottom twenty.  Finally, day five brought about the cupping of a lifetime; a single table of all of the top ten coffees. By now, these coffees had become familiar and the stern looks of concentration on some jurors’ faces had been replaced with a sea of grins from ear to ear.

The People

I couldn’t help but be amazed at the diversity of the international jury.  While the jurors all shared a love of coffee and considerable experience tasting coffee, an amazing number of facets of the coffee industry were reflected in the panel.  Eleven different countries were represented: the USA, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, South Africa, Australia and of course, El Salvador.  Jurors had backgrounds in a number of different areas of the coffee supply chain. 

To give a few examples, Martin Johnson of Arvid Nordquist in Sweden and Stacey Bocksor of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in the USA brought experience in purchasing for large coffee roasteries. Jose Aguilar of Mercanta in the UK and Shinya Sakaguchi of Wataru in Japan represented green coffee importers and traders. Audrey Goodridge of Red Cherry Coffee Roasters in South Africa and our own Mark Dundon of Seven Seeds represented smaller coffee roasteries.  El Salvador’s Jorge Escobar and Celso Penate brought expertise from producing countries to the table, each having been on the national jury.  The jurors also had different levels of experience in cupping coffees in competitions.

With an amazing 27 Cup of Excellence competitions under her belt, Yuko Itoi of Coffee Time in Japan has well and truly entrenched herself in the hearts of the international Cup of Excellence family.  Involved in El Salvador’s Cup of Excellence competitions from the beginning, Jorge Escobar has the hallmarks of a top notch head judge.  Barry Levine of Willoughby’s Coffee in the USA drove me green with envy after hearing stories of his previous competition experience, not only with Cup of Excellence, but also with other competitions such as the SCAA’s annual competition and the Best of Panama competition. At the same time, the program demonstrated an ability to persist and rejuvenate through its inclusion of first time jurors, such as Thomas Eckel of Murnauer Kaffeerosterei in Germany.

While there was a lot of cupping to be done, the competition schedule had been organised to allow time to meet people in the Salvadorean coffee industry and to visit some farms and mills. It was certainly a rare opportunity and a trip highlight to meet the winning farmers prior to the awards ceremony, a group as diverse as the jury. 

The farmers ran the gamut from native English speakers who would have looked at home in a Wall Street stockbrokers as they juggled two blackberries and took us through powerpoint presentations, to farmers who took my Spanish to its limits in explaining how their farm had been passed down for generations. You could never have brought together a more different bunch of people, yet despite the many differences, the room buzzed with excitement and conversation. The sense of community was further reinforced at the awards ceremony, with the crowd filling the hall of the hotel and government officials joining in for the presentation.

The week provided an opportunity to visit some coffee farms and mills. While we saw farms and nurseries groaning with heirloom plants, El Salvador had not been exempt from the march of progress, both for better and for worse. It was almost painful to hear a farmer ponder the possibility of replacing his forty year old bourbon trees with cultivars that might deliver unpredictable results in the cup. 

Conversely, on Saturday’s visit to the winning farm, Finca La Suiza on the Santa Ana volcano, Francisco Menendez explained that at 1650 metres, new seedlings were slow to grow, so he had focussed on implementing a routine to preserve his existing plants with minimal, once-yearly spraying of trace nutrients. We ended our visit at the nearby J Hill mill, which had recently installed a series of vast reservoirs to naturally treat coffee processing water for return to the local river.

The Aftermath

After trading El Salvador’s lush green countryside for Melbourne’s concrete jungle, I watched the online auction with fond memories. The top lot fetched a whopping $US28.00/lb, with the 30th placed lot still managing to fetch a respectable $US5.31/lb.  I was excited to see Australian businesses Melbourne Coffee Merchants, Seven Seeds, The Source and Mecca pick up lots #8, #9 and #26. I will look forward to tasting these lots and reflecting on some extraordinary cupping tables, places and people.

Luca would like to thank the Alliance for Coffee Excellence and El Salvador’s Consejo de Cafe for their generous invitation and tireless efforts. Luca and BeanScene would also like to thank Martin Johnson of Arvid Nordquist for the photos used in this article. 
Luca runs www.coffeereviewaustralia.com