With a historic edition and outstanding participation from producers from across the country, the Mexico Cup of Excellence 2025 concluded successfully in the Magical Town of Orizaba, Veracruz, consolidating its position as the leading platform for promoting Mexican specialty coffee worldwide. Watch video.
Organized by the National Association of the Coffee Industry (ANICAFÉ) in collaboration with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), this 12th edition of the competition took place from May 5 to 16 at the historic San José de Gracia Convent. Ninety-five semifinalist samples, from Chiapas, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Puebla, the State of Mexico, Colima, Hidalgo, and Veracruz, were evaluated by a national and international jury.
Under the direction of renowned specialist Sylvia Gutiérrez and with international leadership from Carrboro Coffee Roasters’ President Scott Conary, the competition’s main judge, the team of tasters carried out a rigorous sensory evaluation that culminated in the awarding of the best coffees in the country.
National Association of the Coffee Industry (ANICAFÉ) Interviews Scott Conary
As the head judge of the 2025 competitions, Scott Conary was interviewed on the importance of the Cup of Excellence as a tool to support coffee producers and quality coffee production. Watch here.
Thirty of the winning coffees will participate in the International Auction and 10 in the National Auction, both public and electronic, on the official ACE website: www.allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org.
The first auction will be held on June 24th and the national winners’ auction will be held from June 23rd to 27th.
THE 12TH. The 2025 Mexico Cup of Excellence once again celebrated the quality, diversity, and three washing processes—natural and experimental—carried out by coffee growers in our country. It is also worth recognizing that the Argüello Family of Finca Santa Cruz in Chiapas, having won two Presidential Awards this time, has a total of six awards in their participation, making them the most awarded farm in the history of the competition.
Enjoy the Replay of our Listening Session titled “Specialty Coffee, Costs & Pricing” including insight on the current global coffee market, as well as our approach to managing these increasing costs that are impacting everyone across the industry as we focus on sharing our producer-partners’ coffee directly with you.
Special Guest: Jose Arnold Paz Mejia, Santa Barbara, Honduras
Jose Arnold Paz Mejia, our friend and producer-partner in Santa Barbara, Honduras, shares his first-hand account of how these developments are impacting farmers including coffee costs and prices at origin.
AsoSeykún is an Arhuaco community of indigenous people of Colombia. They are Chibchan-speaking people and descendants of the Tairona culture, concentrated in northern Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
With the support of Carrboro Coffee and in collaboration with The Chain Collaborative, they are pursuing a strategy to recover, reforest, and protect their ancestral land. They are meeting this goal by processing and selling their coffee collectively at a fair price, ultimately increasing internally-generated income.
Introducing a very limited quantity of the world’s finest coffees from the Cup of Excellence competitions sourced and roasted by Carrboro Coffee Roasters.
Our Relationship with Cup of Excellence:
Carrboro Coffee Roasters has been working with the Cup of Excellence, the world’s premier coffee competition, since 2009, as its mission mirrors ours. For over 20 years, the competition has pioneered producer support, integrity and transparency in the coffee industry. The level of scrutiny that coffees undergo in the COE process is unmatched anywhere in the industry, giving buyers confidence in the quality of COE auction coffees.
As the weather cools & the leaves fall, we look forward to sharing the comfort that is our Winter Solstice Blend. With a label that changes annually, in an effort to reflect the changing feel of each year, so too does the coffee change to highlight different relationships we have forged over the decades of working personally with producers.
This blend highlights one of our long-standing personal relationships with producer-partner Luis Alberto Balladarez from Finca Un Regalo de Dios in Nicaragua.
Farmer Direct Relationships are such an integral part of how we work with and support the coffee industry, as well as the people in it.
For our 2024 Winter Solstice Blend, we have combined three different varietals, representing two distinct methods of coffee processing, to create something unique to this season of gathering and reflection. Enjoy luscious dried fruit with brown sugar sweetness and a perfect hint of seasonal baking spices to round out the cup!
Congrats to our President & Coffee Buyer Scott Conary for making The Sprudge Twenty Class of 2024! The list honors and amplifies leaders in the global coffee community annually.
This honor is well-deserved as we see first-hand Scott’s dedication to making a difference in the coffee industry by volunteering & supporting producers at origin through a wide range of economic & professional development.
“His commitment for developing and nurturing personal, long-term and sustainable direct relationships with farmers and producers is the cornerstone of the Farmer Direct Relationship coffee sourcing program at Carrboro Coffee Roasters,” read more at Sprudge magazine.
We are thrilled to announce that we won the 2024 Best of Chapel Hill award for Crafted Beverage from Chapel Hill Magazine! Thank you to all who voted for us and made this possible!
Every year, Chapel Hill Magazine surveys its readers to vote on the best of the best in Orange County. Thank you to all who voted for us and made this possible!
Our flagship cafes Open Eye Cafe & Caffe Driade have also made the list, along with many of our wholesale partners including Neals Deli, Steel String Brewery, Carolina Coffee Shop, Hawthorne & Wood, Bluebird, Tonya’s Cookies, Weaver Street Market, Wooden Nickel Pub, Vimala’s Curryblossom, Tesoro, Mediterranean Deli, Pizzeria Mercato, Coco Bistro, Crossroads Chapel Hill, Glasshalffull and Epilogue Books Chocolates & Brews.
We are honored to work with these many outstanding owners, chefs, baristas, mixologists, bakers, general managers, and teams at these exceptional local places!
Carrboro Coffee and Caffeine Crawl Owners Launch Producer Collaboration.
To kick off Women’s History Month, Scott Conary of Carrboro Coffee Roasters and Caffeine Crawl / The LAB’s Jason Burton have teamed up to amplify a coffee from a longtime CCR producer partnership.
The coffee bag, and matching 11-by-17-inch International Women’s Day poster, were designed by Jason, with inspiration from the woman behind the coffee.
The collab centers on Nancy Hernandez Contreras, the owner-operator of Finca El Jazmin in the Marcala region of Honduras. Nancy’s relationship with Carrboro Coffee dates back to 2007, when Nancy, as a member of all-women coffee-growing co-op COMUCAP, asked to visit Carrboro Coffee Roasters to learn Retail & Roasting in order to open her own cafe back in her town.
Read about the relationship that sparked the design and how to purchase your own bag & poster HERE!
Sensory Education Training (SET) VC is a global calibration event that will be led by Cup of Excellence (CoE) Head Judge Scott Conary in April 2023. Students around the globe will cup and score coffee sourced from award winning CoE farmers and
renowned green-coffee importers. This unique event will allow students to evaluate their cupping scores in comparison with those of a global community of coffee professionals.
Prior to the event start date, SET VC students will receive a box containing roasted samples for three cuppings, CoE score sheets, an official CoE cupping spoon, and other goodies from our sponsors. SET VC will kick off with a special presentation by Head Judge Scott Conary. Scott will teach students how to cup and score using the CoE score sheet, and explain what makes CoE award-winning coffees so special. At this time, students will learn how to set up the event cuppings in the comfort of their homes or cupping labs.
In April, students should cup the coffees mailed to them, score the coffees, and return their completed score sheets to the event coordinators.
During these 10 days, students will have access to special video sessions lead by CoE staff along with Scott himself, and have the opportunity to have their questions answered. Students may also communicate directly with their fellow participants via this event’s What’sApp group.
After submitting their score sheets, students will receive individualized evaluations of their work and reports compiled by Scott. These reports will be based off the same data CoE uses to select cuppers for their National Juries. The report will provide insight regarding students’ cupping skills and their assessments of the coffees that were evaluated.
At the end of the month, students will join Scott for a virtual presentation of the data collected from all participants, and will answer questions about the coffees’ attributes, the cupping data, and more.
Participation in the SET VC session will give students the following opportunities:
Learn how to cup and score coffee using the CoE score sheet
Cup and score award-winning and unique coffee
Compare cupping scores within a global coffee community
Gain understanding into what high-scoring specialty coffee is
Develop and further their own cupper confidence and accuracy
In 2021, Taiwan Coffee Laboratory, on behalf of the Council of Agriculture and Taiwan Coffee Association, enlisted the help of Alliance for Coffee Excellence to host the first ever Private Collection Auction of Taiwanese specialty coffee.
Carrboro Coffee Roasters (CCR) President Scott Conary led the judging and organization of this Auction, guiding cuppers from around the world to evaluate the best coffees that Taiwan had to offer. CCR was also part of a buying group that was able to purchase the #4 ranked coffee in this auction, from farm Zou Zhou Yuan & farmer Fang Cheng-Lun, in the Alishan Mountain region of the Island.
This Uniquely natural processed & treasured Gesha varietal offers a wonderful ripe fruit forward experience with a syrupy dark caramel sweetness and a cherry cordial finish.
There is a limited amount of this highly prized coffee available, so be sure to get your soon! 2oz tins are available at shopcarrborocoffee.com HERE; and both tins & a pourover cup are available at Open Eye Cafe
Zou Zhou Yuan is a café, coffee farm, orchid farm, and a tea farm all in one, in Chiayi County. The coffee farm was developed over a decade ago, and Zou Zhou Yuan is now the hottest and most popular café in the Alishan Mountain region. Fang is considered a ‘rock star’ in the Taiwan coffee industry, working hard to innovate and produce stellar coffees. The varietal and environment means limited production and that his coffees are highly sought after & prized.
Taiwanese farmers have been growing coffee for more than a hundred years. Recently, with support from various groups & individuals, they have witnessed a significant increase in the cup qualities of locally grown specialty coffee. This auction will honor the incredible work of the local Taiwanese coffee farmers and share their prize coffees with the rest of the world, many for the first time.
aiwanese farmers have been growing coffee for more than a hundred years. Recently, with support from various groups & individuals, they have witnessed a significant increase in the cup qualities of locally grown specialty coffee. This auction will honor the incredible work of the local Taiwanese coffee farmers and share their prize coffees with the rest of the world, many for the first time.
