Colombia Cup of Excellence #2

Buy Colombia Cup of Excellence #2 here.

GROWER
Aníbal Sánchez Burbano
Finca La Siria

REGION
Huila

CULTIVAR
Geisha

ELEVATION
1800-1900 m

HARVEST
December 2020-January 2021

LOOK FOR
Mandarin Orange | Tamarind | Plum

The Cup of Excellence (CoE) is the world’s most prestigious coffee quality competition. It identifies the most exceptional coffees grown each year in 10 countries around the world through an exhaustive process that enlists some of the most discriminating tasters in the industry over multiple rounds of evaluation. Then CoE sells the best lots at auction, usually commanding high prices and generating substantial earnings for the farmers who grew them.

We have served on CoE juries dozens of times over the years, and have been purchasing CoE auction lots from the beginning. The lots we buy may be coffees that articulate what we love best about an origin in an especially memorable way, or coffees that defy our expectations about that origin. But they are always coffees that are sweet, complex, and crisp.

Sometimes, we find that our favorite lots are not the ones in the bright glare of the CoE spotlight that shines on the lots that post average scores over 90 points, but rather those sitting quietly in the shadows at #7 or #13 or #17.

In other cases, we find our preferences aligned with those of the other members of the international jury, and join the scramble for one of the top finishers. The 2021 Colombia CoE was one of those times.

This superlative washed Geisha lot from the La Siria farm of Aníbal Sánchez was one of just two in this year’s competition to achieve an average score of more than 90 points — a distinction that comes with a presidential commendation. It embodies the hallmarks of the elegant Geisha variety — pronounced sweetness, floral aromatics, and outsize complexity. The last time it was evaluated by the quality control team in our lab, they generated sixteen different tasting notes, including bergamot, black tea, green grape, hibiscus, mandarin orange, pear, plum, strawberry, and tamarind.