Cup of Excellence 2008

Bolivia Cup of Excellence winning family

This was now my fifth time on a Cup of Excellence international jury, as I’d previously been involved in competitions in Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia and El Salvador.

9 coffee producing origins now participate in the program, which first started in Brasil in 1999. The first competition held outside Latin America was held in Rwanda in August 2008.

There were nearly 300 farmer entries for Bolivia in 2008, all of which were pre-screened before the very best 100 passed to a national jury of professional coffee tasters from Bolivia.

The 60 highest scoring coffees from the national jury moved into the next rounds of tasting.

These 60 coffees were blind tasted up to 3 times more by the international jury over a week from 6th – 10th October 2008. The panel included coffee professionals from Europe, North America, Japan, Africa and Latin America.

Overall, the quality of the 60 coffees was outstanding. The Bolivian characteristics seem to be full bodied, sweet coffees with an orangey, citrus acidity. All of the coffees benefit from the higher growing altitudes and ideal climate that Bolivia has.

29 coffees scored enough points to gain the Cup of Excellence Award and each farmer was present in the coffee town of Caranavi for the award ceremony.

Last year we bought 5 bags of Lot 20 from Pedro Castro Conurana’s Flor de Mayo farm (currently a Grumpy Mule coffee). I had chance to meet him at this year’s award ceremony where he was presented with the award for second place. Lots 1 to 3 tend to attract some very high prices (the record price paid for a Cup of Excellence coffee was for a Guatemala in 2008 – over $80/lb or nearly £100 per kg at today’s rates).

Pedro Castro is a member of the Union PROAGRO cooperative which has both organic and Fairtrade certification and his success will inevitably lead to more enquiries for the cooperative’s coffees.

The first placed coffee was Café de Cordillera. I had the chance to visit it straight after the award ceremony and a long conversation on route (it was a 2 hour drive into the mountains) revealed a deep pride in the achievements of the husband and wife team. They expressed their desire to use the proceeds from the coffees sale to further the education of their children. In particular, their eldest daughter wants to learn English.

The international jury had earlier had the opportunity to meet all of the participating farmers in round table discussions. They wanted to ask us as coffee roasters how they could develop long term buying relationships for their coffees and what they could do to achieve that. All were committed to producing better quality in return for higher prices. There is great potential in Bolivia for coffees that would suit the UK market, either for espresso blending or speciality single origin brews. We just need to ask for it more.