CUP OF EXCELLENCE – Farmer Brothers’ coffee growers top Colombian competition

TORRANCE, Calif. – An international panel of cupping judges awarded Carmen Cecilia Montoya Patino the highest quality score for her coffee, making her the 2014 Colombian Cup of Excellence top-scoring farmer. Ms. Montoya Patino is a farmer and member of the Salgar Cooperative in Colombia, a direct trade partner of Farmer Bros. Co. (“Farmer Brothers”)—a leading roaster and distributor of high-quality branded and private label coffees.
The Cup of Excellence is an annual Alliance for Coffee Excellence competition held in select coffee-growing origins around the world, which provides an opportunity for coffee farmers to submit their best coffees to experienced cupping judges for an unbiased quality assessment in a competitive environment. Coffees that qualify through both the origin’s national jury and the international jury are eligible for an international online auction for roasters interested in purchasing these phenomenal coffees.
Ms. Montoya Patino’s score qualified at 91.3 points, the highest-scoring coffee submitted this year to Cup of Excellence in Colombia. A fellow Salgar Cooperative member, Pablo Emilio Montoya Caro, also impressed the international jury—placing third with a score of 90.5 points. In all, the Salgar Cooperative’s commitment to producing high-quality coffees paid off across the competition: other members won 5th, 11th, 12th and 13th places.
The green coffee buying team at Farmer Brothers, including its specialty coffee division, Coffee Bean International Inc., gives top priority to creating direct connections with coffee farmers, such as Carmen Montoya Patino, Pablo Montoya Caro and the other farmer partners in the Salgar Cooperative. “Encouraging the production of high-quality, responsibly sourced coffee is a key part of a well-balanced sustainability model. Farmer Brothers’ direct trade coffee buying philosophy, as outlined at www.projectdirectcoffee.com, aims to build a responsible coffee supply chain and create long-term solutions that benefit farmers, sellers and buyers”, stated Paul Thornton, Director of Coffee. To that end, Farmer Brothers purchased Pablo Montoya Caro’s lot of Cup of Excellence award-winning coffee at auction as a special corporate initiative.