Two 90+ Coffees Among 29 Heading to August Best of Yemen Auction

2022 Best of Yemen winner Hifthallah Alhaymi at his farm in the the Hayma Kharijiya region. Images courtesy of ACE/Qima Coffee.

Twenty-nine green coffees, including two scoring 90+, have been named winners in the 2022 Best of Yemen coffee competition, with an online auction scheduled for Tuesday, Aug. 9.

Involving a partnership with Yemen coffee trader Qima Coffee, the Best of Yemen auction was the first coffee auction held under the Private Collection Auction banner of the United States-based nonprofit the Alliance for Coffee Excellence.

Presenting coffee as a potential pathway for peace and prosperity within the country, whose people have suffered from a civil war for nearly eight years, the coffee auction is designed to connect coffee farmers to premium markets.

For 2022, the list of auction coffees reflects three different processing methods: 19 natural process; three “slow dried” process; and seven “alchemy process,” which ACE describes as a combination of pressure, temperature control, gas regulation and managed drying. Aside from two SL28 and one Bourbon varieties of arabica, all the coffees are the “Yemenia” variety.

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More than 400 samples from approximately 2,900 farmers countrywide were evaluated by national judges before a tasting panel of 30 coffee specialists from around the world identified the 29 winners.

Fifteen of the 29 winners came from Hayma Kharijiya, a coffee-growing region located in the west of Sana’a where at least 1,000 families grow coffee.

“It was a huge surprise for me to discover that I was the number one ranked farmer in Yemen,” first-place winner Hifthallah Alhaymi from Hayma Kharijiya said in an announcement from ACE. “I want to now immerse myself in my coffee farms and put all my energy and motivation into improving my quality.”

Ten percent of auction proceeds will go towards the Qima Foundation, a charitable development nonprofit that is dually registered in Yemen and the UK, to fund a forthcoming project in a conflict-stricken region of Yemen.

Click here for complete competition results and information about sample sets.

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