Farmers submitting samples in Hawassa. Press photo by Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity, funded by USAID.
The inaugural Cup of Excellence coffee quality competition and auction program in Ethiopia is off to an auspicious start, with 1,459 coffee samples submitted, breaking the long-running competition’s previous record by more than 400.
With a more than 20-year history and annual competitions throughout Latin America and Africa, this is the first time the Cup of Excellence is being conducted in Ethiopia, arabica coffee’s genetic birthplace and a coffee country prized by buyers for its remarkable coffee diversity and quality.
A judge scores a coffee at a 2019 Cup of Excellence competition in Brazil. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Thursday, Feb. 6, marked the official opening of the Cup of Excellence Ethiopia competition center, including a warehouse and cupping lab, in Ethiopian capital city Addis Ababa, while the program there has involved an ongoing partnership between CoE organizer the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority, and the USAID Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity.
Collected through centers in Jimma, Hawassa, Diredawa and Addis Ababa, the list of 1,459 sample coffees will soon be whittled down by a national jury to 150 lots, which will then be further evaluated by the national jury until an international jury scores the top 40 lots. Those coffees will then be moved to an online auction on Thursday, May 28, that will be open to all Alliance for Coffee Excellence members.
Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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congratulations to all Ethiopia team We expect a lot of unique flavour and presidential coffee from Ethiopia.
Thank you ACE
Now, it is time that Ethiopian coffee will break the challenge and rely bring a remarkable contribution to the growth of the national economy at large. Congratulation all contributes.
Congratulation all Ethiopian team who did all your endeavors to bring Ethiopian coffee in the broad and then making it popular to the global market. Please keep it up
Congratulation to all feed the future Ethiopia value chain activity-USAID program and Ethiopia coffee and tea authority staff for your nice effort to organize CoE in birth place of coffee Ethiopia for the first time with the aim of promote unique coffee flavor to world market, world coffee lover and promote Ethiopian best coffee producer. In all congra to all coffee producers, Cooperative, Union, commercial farm and government stakeholders
Thank you to those fight for the right and benefits of coffee farmers. Our farmers get benefits upto now 25% from his right on the price of coffee.
This is best begin.