2021 Colombia Cup of Excellence Winners Feature Two 90+ Lots

2021 Colombia Cup of Excellence winning producer Pablo Andrés Guerrero in Nariño. Image courtesy of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence.

Results for the Cup of Excellence green coffee competition of 2021 are in, with nearly two dozen high-quality coffee lots coming from Colombian coffee growers now heading to auction.

The winning producers were celebrated during a Friday, April 9, online awards ceremony after a group of judges at COE-approved Global Coffee Centers whittled a list of 35 finalist coffees down to 23, with each winning coffee scoring a minimum of 87 points.

Two coffees, both washed-process Gesha varieties, earned the distinction of scoring 90+ points, including the top lot (90.61) from Nariño-based producer Pablo Andrés Guerrero.

“This year I was stricter with both the selection of the cherries and control of the fermentation time to get the profile I desired,” Guerrero said in an announcement from the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), which co-produced the competition along with Colombia’s Asociación Colombiana para la Excelencia del Café (ASECC).

As might be expected from Colombia, the 2021 COE featured a diversity of coffee varieties, regions, processing methods and even growers. Notably, six of the winning producers were women, doubling the number from last year.

The list of winners also included representation from seven growing regions (Nariño, Huila, Cauca, Antioquia, Quindio, Cundinamarca and Tolima), six processing methods (honey, anaerobic honey, washed, anaerobic washed, natural, anaerobic natural), and eight coffee varieties or cultivars (Gesha, Castillo, Bourbon, Bourbon Rosado, Bourbon Aji, Chiroso, Caturra and Tabi).

All the winning lots are heading to a Thursday, May 20, online auction organized by ACE. Auction information is available through the ACE website. Seven additional Cup of Excellence auctions are currently scheduled for 2021, including Nicaragua (June 29), Ethiopia (July 7), Mexico (July 15), Guatemala (July 27), Costa Rica (July 29), El Salvador (August 10) and Honduras (August 19).