This last December , Miles Small from CoffeeTalk joined a panel of judges to cup Rainforest Alliance cer­ti­fied cof­fees from around the world. Held at the cup­ping lab at the Specialty Coffee Association of America offices in Long Beach, California, the cup­ping was lead by Shawn Hamilton; cof­fee buyer from Java City and our host was Petra Tanos, Coördinator of Sustainable Value Chains from Rainforest Alliance. CoffeeTalk was joined by a stel­lar group of cup­pers, they were…

All the cof­fees were sam­ple roasted fol­low­ing SCAA pro­to­cols at the lab by Rocky Rhodes. The com­pe­ti­tion was tight with many extra­or­di­nary cof­fees that exem­pli­fied Rainforest Alliance’s com­mit­ment to qual­ity, along with sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural prac­tices and stew­ard­ship of the envi­ron­ment. 35 sam­ples from Brazil, Peru, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, and Hawai’i were evaluated.

Participation by Papua New Guinea was a first for them. The Korona Estate from PNG is a plan­ta­tion owned and oper­ated by females in the remote Eastern Highlands Province, with a focus on main­tain­ing tra­di­tional hous­ing and gar­den­ing areas for sea­sonal work­ers.  The con­ser­va­tion area is a pris­tine rain­for­est pro­vid­ing a home for the Bird of Paradise species.

And the Top Ten Finalists were…

Congratulations to these fine cof­fees and to RFA for lead­ing this event. The next com­pet­i­tive cup­ping for the Rainforest Alliance will be held at the ICE Grading Room in New York City on April 4–6 of 2011.