After a one year hiatus, the Cup of Excellence competition returns in November to Brazil, the origin where there first COE was held in 1999.
You can read all about it in the organization’s press release:
The Brazil Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) announces with excitement the 2008 Cup of Excellence® schedule, bringing the successful competition back to where it began in 1999. The 2008 competition will mark the ninth Cup of Excellence competition for Brazil, and the first to be held at a BSCA cupping facility in Machado.
The international competition, scheduled for November 10-14, 2008 in Machado, is welcomed with great anticipation. “Historically, Brazil and Cup of Excellence will always be intertwined,” explained Andrew Barnett of Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa, Calif., a long-time supporter and buyer of the Cup of Excellence coffees. “Brazil’s exemplary coffee artistry, paired with the Cup of Excellence prescient vision, forever changed the history of modern coffee. With great joy, we’ll soon savor Brazil’s most-amazing 2008 coffees.”
The BSCA shares in the excitement, as the past years of participation have proven successful in building the foundation for sensorial coffee tasting, a methodology that is changing the way coffee farms around the world evaluate the quality of coffee. According to the BSCA, “This has become a very important quality standard for all the farms that participate in the program. Because the evaluations throughout each phase of the competition are so stringent, that if a lot reaches the national jury, but does not make it to auction, that coffee is still regarded as a winner. Further, the greater objective of the program is to reach the largest number of the producers, so that the quality can be elevated at all levels of the farm.”
Since its inception, the Cup of Excellence program has hosted programs in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia and Rwanda. The Cup of Excellence is managed by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc. The state-of-the-art Cup of Excellence auction has been managed in partnership with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm. For more information about the Cup of Excellence program, to register to receive samples from the Brazil competition, or to register to participate in the online auction, scheduled for January 19, 2009, please visit www.cupofexcellence.org.