BeanScene Magazine

In the frenzy of sending out samples, attempting to clear customs, posting lot sizes and farm information, coordinating potential buyers with partner companies and importers, and gathering the winning farmers to watch the live auction; there was time to pause and reminisce back to the beginning of the Cup of Excellence and to reflect on the impact of the program over the last ten years.

The Brazil farmers that won that very first competition in 1999 had so little faith in our competition/auction experiment that they asked us to buy their coffee first at market value in order to hold it for the auction. This made perfect sense at the time if one considers that a winning farmer was required to hold his coffee lot in a bonded warehouse from the national jury week all the way past the auction to export before being paid. For many farmers, this hold time (potentially 3-4 months) would be financially impossible – especially with no certainty about premiums.

Changing Times

Today, although the economic situation is much the same, it is not unusual to have 500 farmers submit samples with hopes that their coffee will make it to the auction. When a coffee farmer dares to dream, invests in quality and wins a Cup of Excellence award, the international community has a responsibility to make good on the promise that hard work and great coffee will end in exhilaration rather than disappointment. This is the promise that the Cup of Excellence has delivered by bridging the divide between coffee growers and coffee roasters, baristas and consumers worldwide.

That first auction was 72 hours in length, with each individual lot enjoying a ‘quickest finger on the keyboard’ timed close. While the first auction was by far the longest, the most recent 50th auction was indeed the shortest. The auction closed amid either celebration or shock a mere two and a half hours after the first furious bidding began – leaving many wondering what savvy bidders and keyboard wizards left them without their favorite coffees.

Cup of Excellence coffees are sold during an online globally competitive auction where time zones are irrelevant. It seems almost as if starlight in Asia is of greater help than sunshine in North America in assuring a winning bidding strategy.

The top price paid for the Brazil farmers in 1999 was $2.60 a pound – ironically around the same price as what the auction bidding now opens at. The excitement from the buyers for this top lot was something unseen in the coffee industry. 1999 was really not that long ago in the history of coffee – a mere decade in an industry that has existed for centuries.  With this said, the last ten years have still been nothing short of revolutionary. Status quo is much different now for coffee growers, who now feel that anything is possible in producing top quality, learning to cup, experimenting with varietals and growing techniques, building relationships, and most of all, securing a financial future for their families.

A Fresh Approach

Nothing akin to Cup of Excellence’s stringent selection process for coffee has ever existed on a global standardized basis. Sure, many companies hold coffee up to scrutiny in their own cupping labs, but coffee has never been put through such intense scoring by so many different cuppers all for the sake of finding that ‘needle in a haystack’ coffee – one that no one knew existed, one with a flavor so unique and rare that suddenly the marketplace questions all it has known about the kind of coffee a country could produce. This is what Cup of Excellence has done in multiple countries and for hundreds of farmers.

The moment when coffee paradigms shifted was in Brazil 2000 during the discussion of the coffees having just been cupped.  One juror asked, “What country are we in?”  expressing what everyone was thinking: many of these coffees tasted like nothing experienced from Brazil in the past. This was the year when shockingly some of the winners were from regions with the reputation of producing extremely poor quality.  Brazil farmers and savvy roasters took notice and wondered if everything they thought they knew about Brazil’s coffees should be put to the test.

In the winter of 2000, Guatemala’s Anacafé enquired whether the Cup of Excellence program could be carried out for its top coffees as well. Having a reputation for unparalleled coffees, it seemed obvious that bringing in an international jury to set the standard for winning coffees from the land of Antigua and the famous quetzal made perfect sense. In late Spring of 2001, with Anacafé presidential portraits overseeing the process, the international jury assembled with spoons in hand, ready to score. Instead, to their astonishment, a new, untested and certainly not simple cupping form was introduced. Amid both criticism and cheer, this form has continued to be used by Cup of Excellence juries ever since.

No cupping form causes a paradigm shift by itself but it does help a cupper focus on characteristics that are critical to discovering exemplary coffees. This form moved the jury into the scoring realization that ‘sweet’ and ‘clean’ are the most basic components of great coffee and that there may be many differing levels of sweetness in a truly exemplary coffee. This new form required acidity to be scored by quality and balance, as high volume is not the overriding characteristic of exemplary acidity. By allowing cuppers a scored preference category for their own marketplace, this form was uniquely suited for multinational juries, competitions in all of the producing countries and for all of the different varietals that might compete for the title of Cup of Excellence.  A few years ago, a task force attempted to fine-tune the form only to be met with loud disapproval from loyal users.

Making a difference

In 2002, Nicaraguan coffee farmers posed the next opportunity for Cup of Excellence to make a difference in infrastructure, livelihoods, recognition and quality. Nicaragua was a coffee producing country that had been through a tremendous amount of internal turmoil and in the aftermath, a fairly effective and proactive cooperative system had developed. But even with support from social trading programs, the country was languishing without any recognition for its potential quality. Nicaragua was for the most part recognised in the marketplace simply as Fair Trade and organic coffee.

The discussion with Nicaraguan coffee exporters about whether Cup of Excellence was a solution or a bigger problem proved to be a harbinger of future conversations in almost every country. Exporters believed that by isolating the very best quality, the rest of the country’s coffee prices would suffer. This argument wrongly presumed that these few lots were the only quality coffee that could ever be produced.

Cup of Excellence has proven in every country that the reward process creates an incentive to produce more and better quality and that the selection process itself acts as a phenomenal educational tool to help teach willing farmers. Over the last ten years, the Cup of Excellence program has also trained hundreds of national cuppers who have become a key internal resource to help determine which coffees are suitable for premiums. These mostly young, enthusiastic cuppers work with cutting edge roasters to help identify unique and valuable coffees.

Then at the SCAA conference in 2002, a small group of El Salvador’s producers met and explored ways that Cup of Excellence could also bring distinction to El Salvador’s coffees. Years ago, El Salvador was a powerhouse producer, but then the war came and so did isolation and a crumbling coffee infrastructure. El Salvador’s mills, although extremely efficient, were processing huge assembly line quantities – hardly the way to create small farmer identified award winning coffees. However, the believers won the argument and a small mill was found to concentrate solely on future ambassador coffees. Isolation ironically paid off: El Salvador farmers had not been enticed to replace their heirloom Bourbons with higher yielding sun grown coffees. These treasured Bourbons along with their now famous Pacamaras would catapult El Salvador into specialty fame.

George Howell and I had been conducting the program as consultants until 2002 when The Alliance for Coffee Excellence Inc. (ACE) was created. El Salvador was the first country to have all of its programs under the ACE umbrella. The US based nonprofit organization was created to standardize, expand and legally protect the Cup of Excellence program. Under ACE, the Cup of Excellence program has grown to also include Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Rwanda and Colombia, with more countries to be included in the future. ACE has an international Board of Directors and advisory panel made up of both industry and producer members, a team of highly respected head judges, jurors that have come from 45 countries and buyers large and small that operate in hundreds of international yet local marketplaces.

The future is bright

Over the past 7 years, coffee farmers in Nicaragua have seen substantial changes in their industry. Small farmers from previously unknown regions have developed long term relationships with roasters, family owned mills are specialising in the preparation of farm identified small lots and Nicaragua as a producing country has gained the reputation as a single origin high quality producer enjoying greater export income for all of its coffee. It is somewhat fitting that Japanese roasters bought such a large percentage of the 50th anniversary auction coffees because even before the Cup of Excellence was created, it was these roasters that were willing to take a risk and pay a premium for Brazil’s newfound quality. Cup of Excellence was after all, developed for this exact purpose – to garner attention and obtain premiums from the rest of the world.

The most extraordinary result from the last 50 competitions is that it has changed what is possible for coffee! While no one knows the future, we do know that it will not resemble the past and that a strong Cup of Excellence will rely on the cutting edge roasters and retailers of Australia.