FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MISSOULA, Mt. (December 14, 2006) – The Cup of Excellence® program returned to a campus setting for its annual Brazil Cup of Excellence competition. The very first competition was held in 1999 on a university campus in Lavras, Brazil with only a handful of cuppers. Eight years later thirty-one international cuppers enjoyed the final selection week on campus at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, one of the largest and most well known agricultural universities in Latin America.

All week students and professors were seen mingling with cuppers as they exchanged viewpoints on the complexities of top coffees. In her award ceremony speech, Susie Spindler, the managing director for the Cup of Excellence program agreed with the desire of the university team to partner the quality selection process of Cup of Excellence with Viçosa’s state of the art agronomics education in order to complete the circle of coffee knowledge available to the farmers and the students.

Of particular interest on campus is the study of specific varietals and how these affect quality. Coffees of the heirloom Bourbon variety won half of the awards in this competition, many more than would have been expected given their percentage in the Brazil specialty coffee production, indicating that its particular flavor profile may be critically important for top coffee.

The winning coffees did everything to live up to expectations that the 2006 Brazil crop would have outstanding quality. After several weeks of very stringent cuppings, 29 coffee farmers received the coveted Cup of Excellence® award. The winning coffees were described with taste characteristics that seemed more like top wines and included caramel or honey-like sweetness, lush fruitiness, perfect balance between the acidity and the body, long smooth aftertaste, big and powerful. “As the new Executive Director of The Brazil Specialty Coffee Association, I am really impressed with the coffees that won this competition. These coffees show that Brazil is equal in its quality to any country in the world” indicated Alexandre Gonzaga who took over in October 2006.

Many of the winning farmers have been on the Brazil Cup of Excellence award stage in previous years and in fact the first place farmer Cicero Vegas Cavalcanti de Albuquerque of Fazenda Esperanca has been a presidential award winner, receiving over 90 points, multiple times. 14 of the 29 winners have won before indicating that the quality of their coffee is not only great but also very consistent. These valuable and rare coffee lots will be sold to the highest bidder during an open Internet auction beginning at 9AM Eastern standard time on January 16, 2007. The Cup of Excellence program has become famous for the high prices paid to winning farmers and for the rare and exemplary quality that these winning coffees represent. In fact last year the top coffee broke the record garnering a whopping $49.75lb. This same farmer took fourth place with another high scoring coffee.

The Cup of Excellence program is managed by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc. The state of the art Cup of Excellence auction has been run in partnership with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm since 2002 While the active bidding site is open only to registered and approved bidders a seconds-delayed summary screen will be available to anyone logging in to the site. For more information about the program, the winning farms, their jury scores and descriptions, log on to www.cupofexcellence.org, email Susie Spindler at susies@cupofexcellence.org or phone 406-542-3509.