Cup of Excellence

 

 

April will be an exciting month for us at Carvetii: we have just committed to our first Cup of Excellence coffee and we are expecting delivery at the end of March. This is the first of a number of small lot coffees we’ll be exploring and making available in 2016.  The Cup of Excellence programme is essentially a competition which coffee farms can enter, with the winning lots being sold by auction. The concept of the Cup of Excellence is best described by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence who organise the programme:

Cup of Excellence is the most prestigious competition and award for high quality coffees. The level of scrutiny that Cup of Excellence coffees undergo is unmatched anywhere in the specialty coffee industry. Each year, thousands of coffees are submitted for consideration, with winning coffees sold in global online auctions at premium prices, with the vast majority of auction proceeds going to the farmers.

The competition is rigorous, with cupping evaluations conducted over a three-week process by industry experts: first by a National Jury of about a dozen qualified jurors from the origin country, and then by an International Jury, comprised of approximately 20–25 experienced jurors from around the world. A competition with 300 entries yields an average of 9,000 analyzed cups, with each “Top 10” coffee being cupped at least 120 times.

Our Cup of Excellence lot will be Fazenda do Brejinho, a farm from the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. The lot scored 85.87 (out of 100) and was ranked 30th in the competition. It is a natural processed coffee and was described by the judges as follows:

Aroma/Flavor: Apricot, jasmine, dark chocolate, papaya, cranberry, orange, vanilla, nuts
Acidity: Citric
Other: Smooth, round, dense

As the lot size for this coffee was only 23 x 30kg bags, we only have a very limited supply of this coffee available. Some of it will be served in coffee shops around Cumbria and we’re making a small number of bags available to the public via our website. If you’d like to be in with a chance to buy a bag of this coffee, please register here.   We’re only offering this coffee to those who have pre-registered.