Many Varieties Shine at the Third Peru Cup of Excellence in Jaén

Judging at the third ever Peru Cup of Excellence competition in Jaén. Winning coffees are heading to a Dec. 5 auction. Images courtesy of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence.

The third Cup of Excellence (CoE) competition in Peru resulted in higher-than-ever top scores after 209 samples from 11 coffee-growing regions made their way through the judging process in Jaén.

In the end, the list of winners was whittled down to 21 farms and farmers whose green coffee scored 87 points or above, according to an international jury of professional coffee cuppers representing the markets of Japan, South Korea, the United States, Hong Kong, Russia, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Peru.

All 21 of the winning lots will be available at the CoE auction online on Thursday, Dec. 5. Additional coffees that scored between 85-86.99 will be made available in a separate “National Winners” auction taking place Dec. 2-6.

All but one of the coffees on the list of Peru CoE winners ended up being the result of the fully washed processing method favored by most Peruvian arabica producers, with the one exception being a honey-process coffee from the Cajamarca region. Yet there was much more diversity than in years past in the varieties of coffees earning the top scores, according to published results.

Farmer Grimanés Morales Lizana from the province of San Ignacio in Cajamarca took the top prize with a 92.28 score for a washed coffee from the farm La Lucuma. The coffee is an unidentified Bourbon mutation that was named Marshel. The second-highest-scoring coffee — a washed Gesha at 91.44 — came from the Nuevo Progreso farm of Lucio Luque Vásquez in Cusco’s La Convención province. Rounding out the top three was a 91.40-scoring washed Catuai variety from Junior Guido Flores Elera and the farm Agua Dulce in the Jaén province.

In addition to the Dec. 5 Peru CoE auction, organizer the Alliance for Coffee Excellence is running the Brazil CoE auction on Tuesday, Nov. 26. Read our coverage of the landmark 20th Brazil CoE auction here.