What is Cup of Excellence?

Cup of Excellence (CoE) is the world's most prestigious green coffee competition, run annually in producing countries by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE). Coffees are submitted by producers, then undergo multiple rounds of cupping by national and international juries of licensed Q Graders - with only those scoring 87 points or above on the SCA 100-point scale earning the Cup of Excellence designation. The highest-scoring lots are then sold at online auction to international buyers.

Cup of Excellence auctions consistently achieve the highest prices paid for traceable green coffee anywhere in the world. Winning lots from Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Brazil, and other participating countries regularly sell for multiples of the specialty market price - sometimes tens or hundreds of dollars per pound for the top-ranking coffees. The competition has launched the careers of numerous producers and put previously unknown farms and regions on the specialty coffee map.

For green coffee buyers, Cup of Excellence results serve multiple purposes. The winning lots themselves are available at auction. But the broader CoE programme has also driven quality improvement in participating countries by showing producers that exceptional quality commands exceptional prices - and by providing a credible, internationally calibrated quality benchmark against which other coffees from the same origins can be measured.