The Cup of Excellence is an annual competition held in several countries to identify the highest quality

coffee Coffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content, but decaffeinated coffee is also commercially a ...

s produced. It is organized by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, which was founded by George Howell, Susie Spindler and Silvio Leite. The Cup of Excellence has worked to fundamentally change the high quality coffee industry and has supported advances in farming and premiums to farmers that would have been impossible without it.

Format

The winning coffees are sold in internet auctions. The concept was developed by the Gourmet Coffee Project of the International Coffee Organization (ICO). This project was devised by Pablo Dubois, Head of Operations of the ICO and Frans Bolvenkel, of the International Trade Centre (ITC) at a meeting in Geneva in late 1994. This project, supervised by the ICO, managed by the ITC and largely financed by the Common Fund for Commodities, ran from 1995 to 2000, and aimed to develop methodologies for the creation of new "gourmet" or high-quality speciality coffees. The Cup of Excellence competition has been dubbed as the '

Oscars The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence i ...

of the coffee world'. Coffee is scored and priced on the market based on two quality attributes that are measured, material and symbolic attributes. These can be defined as aromas, flavors, certification, market size, high altitude plot, and country of origin.

History

The competitions began in 1999. As of 2020, competitions are held in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador,

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

Costa Rica Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America. It borders Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as Maritime bo ...

Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Burundi Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is located in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa, with a population of over 14 million peop ...

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

, Indonesia, and

Rwanda Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...

. In the course of the competition each coffee is tested at least five times. Only those coffees with high scores continuously move forward in the competition. The final winners are awarded the Cup of Excellence and sold via an internet auction to the highest bidder. The purpose of the auctions are for farmers to receive increased premiums for their exemplary coffees and to set transparency in pricing. The market for coffee has increased over 330% from 2003 to 2011. In 2025, Cup of Excellence announced they would be switching from the online auction provider M-Cultivo to V-Auction.

Organization

The COE board of directions Noelia Villalobos - Board Chair Tim Taylor - Treasurer Paul Stewart - Secretary Cory Bush - CEO of Beyers Koffie, Board Member Thomas Pulpan - Kaffebrenneriet, Board Member Carl Cervone- Enveritas, Board Member Aleco Chigounis- Red Fox, Board Member John Moore- CEO of Vassilaros & Sons Coffee, Board Member Vanusia Nogueria- Executive Director ICO, Board Member

Results

References

Traore, Togo M., Norbert L. W. Wilson, and Deacue Fields. “What Explains Specialty Coffee Quality Scores and Prices: A Case Study from the Cup of Excellence Program.” Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 50, no. 3 (August 2018): 349–68. https://doi.org/10.1017/aae.2018.5. Wilson, Adam P., and Norbert LW Wilson. “Economics of Quality in the Specialty Coffee Industry: Insights from the Cup of Excellence Auction Programs.” Agricultural Economics 45, no. S1 (2014): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12132. Bureau, US Census. “Caution: HOT Commodity!” The United States Census Bureau. Accessed April 11, 2023. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/global-reach/2013/06/coffeedata.html. Internet Archive. “GH2X-FDCC: ICyte - Saved Page: Cup of Excellence® Winners Re… : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Accessed April 11, 2023. https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_GH2X-FDCC.

External links

* https://allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org/ Awards established in 1999 Food and drink awards Coffee culture