The Cup of Excellence began in Brazil in 1999 by a group with deep knowledge of coffee with support from the Brazilian government, from BSCA (Brazil Specialty Coffee Association), OIC and OMC, with the objective of compensating producers for their efforts and work aimed at quality.
The Brazil Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) started holding this contest and, currently, counts on support from Sebrae and partnership with the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil).
With the success of the initiative, BSCA began to hold the Cup in other countries. However, as holder of the technology and brand, it decided it was not possible to continue organizing competitions in other rival countries.
Thus, in 2005, BSCA donated the brand to ACE, Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), an American entity, which began to organize the event outside Brazil.
After an expansion period of the event, ACE recently announced that, next year, only five countries will promote the Cup of Excellence: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras.
Open to all producers of Arabian coffee, the contest has the objective of maintaining a platform of iniciative for the producers who adhere to the “Cup of Excellence” and reinforce with the international market that Brazil produces very high quality special coffees, that that such products can be sold for record prices, registering prices more than 3,000% higher than those practiced in the New York Stock Market, the main commercial platform for coffee in the world.
The intention is also to increase the number of participants and the geographic coverage of the quality contest, enlarging the number of lots auctioned on the Internet and the number of participants (potential buyers) in the electronic auction.
The international jury is composed by coffee professionals from the main buying countries in the world, who test and prove the exceptional quality of the special Brazilian coffees.
Besides these professionals participating in the winners’ sales auction, paying prices significantly greater that the conventional market, they are also opinion formers and, upon examining these excellent Brazilian coffees, collaborate with the disclosure of our products, whether by indicating them on their commercial packages, or through positive mouth-to-mouth disclosure.
Starting Monday, October 13, more than 364 samples, among the 361 registered in the Cup of Excellence – Pulped Naturals 2015, originating from the different producer regions of Brazil, will be evaluated, in Poços de Caldas (MG), by the contest’s international jury, formed by professionals from several countries, and may become the winners of this year’s main quality contest for shelled and/or pulped coffee cherries in the country and to be made available for sale in the competitive auction, via the Internet, on December 1 of this year.
The coffees registered in the Cup of Excellence are evaluated according to the properties such as body, flavor, sweetness and degree of acidity, receiving grades from 0 (zero) to 100, according to the official contest table.
The lots classifies and determined as winners after the evaluation in the international phase are those that obtain scores equal to or greater than 85 points.
