FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MISSOULA, MT (January 17, 2007) – After eight years of conducting the Cup of Excellence program the Brazil winning farmers saw their average price per pound rise up to over $5.00lb. Yesterday’s online auction took many by surprise as all 28 coffees had bids within the first 25 minutes, and a record number of bids were placed by its end some 6&1/2 hours later. Cup of Excellence auctions see fierce bidding and this was no exception as prices rose for the exemplary winning coffees from a very geographically diverse group of farmers.

“This auction was all about the wonderful diversity present in Brazil’s top coffees and about how valuable all of the different flavor profiles have become to top roasters through out the world,” explained Silvio Leite, this year’s competition head judge and a co-creator of the program in Brazil. “ It was so great at the awards ceremony this year to greet farmers from Sul de Minas, Bahia, Mogiana and many other regions across Brazil and to congratulate them for having the best coffees of the harvest,” he continued.

The successful buyers are also scattered geographically and will be roasting these coffees to serve to their customers in the US, Canada, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, and Germany. There were many companies bidding for the first time that expressed astonishment at the pace of the auction and how dedicated some of the buyers were in purchasing a Cup of Excellence coffee.

Susie Spindler, the Executive Director of the Cup of Excellence program indicated that, “With the majority of the lots obtaining higher prices, it indicates that the brand is carrying itself and higher prices are being seen across the board, not just with the first placed coffees.”

In an effort to maintain the Cup of Excellence quality, all of the winning coffees were vacuum packaged using the Penta Box green coffee packaging system used by Daterra in order to protect the quality before the auction and after shipping. Should this packaging method prove to be successful, it will eventually be implemented in all of the Cup of Excellence programs.

This marks the 29th auction for the Cup of Excellence program. It is managed by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Inc., in partnership with producing countries. The state of the art Cup of Excellence auction is designed and managed in cooperation with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm with offices in New York and Australia. To view the auction results, for winning farm information, to become a member or to learn more about the program log on to www.cupofexcellence.org.