Coffee awards and competitions

Coffee awards and competitions / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Cupping for Quality 2010, round 2

For the past several years, I’ve covered the Rainforest Alliance (RA) Cupping for Quality awards, a competition for RA-certified farms. In its first year, 2003, eight countries submitted 40 coffees for consideration. There is now so much participation, and to accommodate the variable seasonality of the world’s coffees, that two cuppings are held each year: May for Central America and India, and December for the southern hemisphere including Brazil, Peru, East Africa, and Indonesia.

My last report was for the December 2009 cupping, and just recently RA announced the winners of the May 2010 cupping.  There were 68 coffees submitted, mostly from Central America, but with India and the Dominican Republic competing for the first time.

Here are the top ten winners and their scores.

  1. El Injerto (Guatemala) — 89.73. Four time winner of the Guatemalan Cup of Excellence. 470 of the 720 ha of this farm in Huehuetenango (15.564794, -91.941574) is forested.
  2. El Cashal (El Salvador)  — 86.95  Located in AhuachapÁ¡n in the western part of El Salvador (map here).
  3. Coopranaranjo R.L. (Costa Rica)* —  86.45. A cooperative/mill in Naranjo, Central Valley. Markets coffee under five different brands. There isn’t any mention of which/how many producers are RA certified.
  4. La BendiciÁ³n (Guatemala)  —  86.38. Located in Chimaltenango (14.486317, -91.004567). An allied farm, Santa Elisa Pachup, came in second place a couple of years ago.
  5. San Diego Buena Vista (Guatemala) —  86.37. Acatenango, Chimaltenango (14.543416, -90.975137).
  6. Coopedota R.L. (Costa Rica) —  86.20.  A large cooperative and mill, marketing at least eight brands. One, Cafe Hermosa, is marketed as RA certified. The mill also has facilities for separating micro-lots from individual producers.
  7. La Hilda (Costa Rica) —  85.95. A single estate. A look at this video, which I believe to be the correct place, shows that the production area is primarily sun coffee, as is typical in much of Costa Rica. You can look at it in Google Earth as well (10.093514, -84.216667). It looks like the production area is sun, but that there is adjacent forest. Portland Roasting works directly with this farm more info at their site.
  8. El Zapote (Guatemala) —   85.78. There are multiple farms with this name in Guatemala, but I am pretty sure this is the finca in Acatenango, Chimaltenango (14.547683, -90.968283).
  9. Cafetalera TirrÁ¡, S.A. (Costa Rica)  —   85.13. Processes and markets the coffee grown in Poas and Alajuela.
  10. Jesus MarÁ­a (Nicaragua)  —   85.13. I think this is near Matagalpa.

*Aside from #7, the Costa Rican winners are cooperatives and/or mills.  Coffee from Costa Rica is often named or branded by the mill, which processes coffee from farms in the surrounding region, so farm source can sometimes be difficult to determine. These are pretty large entities, and Rainforest Alliance explained to me that while not all members/suppliers of the named winner are certified, the mill or co-op submits a representative sample of 100% certified coffee from a RA-certified farm or farms. RA requires segregation and traceability of their certified coffee from the rest of the coffee moving through the supply chain.

Coffee awards and competitions

Roast Magazine Roasters of the Year 2011

It’s that time of year again. Roast Magazine has announced their Roaster of the Year winners. One of the major criteria for the award is showing a commitment to sustainability. I’ll be a little bit more brief than in past years, as the author of the articles at Roast Magazine, Rivers Janssen, did a great job of covering the sustainability efforts of both roasters.

The Macro Roaster of the Year is Dillanos Coffee Roasters of Sumner, WA. Dillanos has accounts in all 50 states, and while they are listed by Roast Magazine as wholesale only, there is a section of their web site where some of their branded and single origin coffees and can be purchased in 3/4-pound bags. The single origin coffees are part of Dillanos’ One Harvest Project, which are their direct relationship coffees.

You can read more about Dillanos at the Dillanos blog.

The Micro Roaster of the Year is Conscious Coffees in Boulder, CO.  Roast Magazine lists them as wholesale only as well; the Conscious Coffees web site lists where their coffees are available, but they also offer online retail ordering.

Conscious Coffees is one of the 23 members of Cooperative Coffees, a green coffee importing cooperative. Thus, you can find detailed information on the origins of their coffees both on the Conscious Coffee web site, and on the Cooperative Coffees site — which also has a great transparency site called Fair Trade Proof where you can look up any lot of coffee and see all the paperwork and documentation from the farm to the roaster.

Congrats to both.

Coffee awards and competitions

First Coffee Conservation award announced

A few months ago I wrote about the announcement of new award for coffee farmers initiated by Cooper Ecological Monitoring, Roast Magazine, and Birder’s Exchange (a program of the American Birding Association). The Coffee Conservation Award will be presented annually to recognize farms making a significant contribution to global biodiversity preservation. The award is a $1000 cash prize, to be used to further meaningful, science-based conservation practices on the winning farm.

The award will focus on a particular country each year. The inaugural country was El Salvador, and the winning producer is Finca El Porvenir.

El Porvenir is actually a group of three properties between 1,000 to 1,600 m in elevation on the slopes of Cerro El Tigre (13.44998, -88.42947), part of the isolated Sierra Tecapa—Chinameca range in eastern El Salvador, in the department of UsulutÁ¡n. This is the orange region on the map below (click to enlarge). This El Porvenir should not to be confused with former Cup of Excellence winner El Porvenir, located in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountains, in green.

El Porvenir covers 54 ha, which includes 16 ha of protected forest. Coffee varieties grown are pacamara, bourbon, and typica, and the last two crops have been exported to Germany and Italy. It is Rainforest Alliance certified, and also certified under Starbucks C.A.F.E. practices. The owner, Agroindustrias Homberger, S.A. de C.V., also owns and/or manages over 550 ha of additional adjacent coffee farms. These include another 100+ ha of protected land. Some of the farms have been in general manager Mauricio Homberger’s family for decades.

Biodiversity claims made in the nomination process for the Coffee Conservation award must be verified on the ground by partner organizations. A bird survey was performed at EL Porvenir in spring 2010 by SalvaNatura, one of the first inventories taken in this region. SalvaNatura found some bird species that have restricted ranges in northern Central America, including the Green-throated Mountain-Gem (Lampornis viridipallens), a large hummingbird; Bushy-crested Jay (Cyanocorax melanocyaneus), Rufous-browed Wren (Troglodytes rufociliatus), and Bar-winged Oriole (Icterus maculialatus).

El Porvenir plans on using the award funds for a biologist-led conservation course at the local school, along with an art contest for students with the theme ”Forest Conservation.” In addition to the cash prize, a pair of binoculars was also awarded, and will be used to help farm personnel participate and share in birding tours.

This award was sponsored by Cafe Imports, and Skyscrape Foundation/Mark Cappellano supported SalvaNatura to do the biological inventory. Congrats to El Porvenir.

Coffee awards and competitions

SCAA Coffee of the Year

Let’s take a look at the winners of the annual Coffee of the Year competition for single origin coffees, announced at the Specialty Coffee Association
of America (SCAA) event. There were around 140 coffees competing this year.

This year the COTY coffees were available for tasting as pour-overs in a spacious tasting area where information on each coffee (including score) was available. People could taste them all and submit a ballot indicating their single favorite coffee. In past years, the open tasting was from airpots, blind, and we submitted our top three favorites. I liked this format, in particular that the data given on each coffee included region, varietal, and farm certifications.

If anybody knows the outcome of the expo participant voting, or the roaster/availability to consumers of any of the winners, please let everybody know in the comments.

The overall point leader with a score of 90.5 was — as it was last year — from Colombia (San Agustin, Huila): Finca Buenavista. This was a microlot from the farm of Carlos Imbachi submitted by Sweet Maria’s (right now the notes are in Thom’s Colombia offering archives), imported by Virmax. The 7-ha farm is Rainforest Alliance certified.

Here are the rest of the winners, in descending-score order. I’ve put the certifications, if any, in italics below.

  • Best of origin, Guatemala: Puerta Verde (Antigua, Sacatepequez). Score
    89.625. Placed 7th in the 2009 Cup of Excellence competition, and certified under Starbucks CAFE practices.
  • Best of origin, Honduras: La Isabela (Mogola/Marcala/La Paz). Score
    89.313
  • Best of origin, Kenya: Gichathaini (Nyeri). Score 89.222. Fair Trade certified.
  • Best of origin, Peru: Tunki (Puno). Score 89.2. Fair Trade, Organic, and Rainforest Alliance certified, also a winner in this year’s Rainforest Alliance Cupping for Quality competition, where you can read more about it. This was our personal favorite, and was getting very favorable comments from people. It was really nice, very distinctive and bright. I would not have guessed it for a Peru. (Update: here’s an interview with the farmer. He has a quality tip: no sweaty mules.)
  • Best of origin, Panama: Hacienda La Esmeralda (Boquete). Score 89.125. Rainforest Alliance certified.
  • Best of origin, USA/Hawaii: The Rising Sun (Ka’u). Score 87.563. Nice article here.
  • Best of origin, El Salvador: El Recuerdo (Apaneca/Ilamatapeq). Score
    87.375. A participant in the 2008 Cup of Excellence competition.
  • Best of origin, Nicaragua: Un Regalo de Dios (Mozonte/Nueve Segovia). Score 85.558. Starbucks CAFE practices.

That’s an average of 89.22.

Coffee & Conservation covered previous versions of this competition in 2009 and 2008.