FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bolivia’s Cup of Excellence® Auction Prices Thrill Farmers

Missoula MT. (November 16, 2007) - Juanco Manami Huanco wiped tears from her eyes as she watched the price for her second place coffee rocket to $21.20lb. during the Cup of Excellence internet auction held on November 15th. The auction proceeds will be the most profit she has ever seen from her small 6-hectare farm. The coffee was successfully bought by Stumptown Coffee Roasters in Portland, Oregon and Sweet Maria’s in California.

The first place winning lot also sold for $21.10lb and was bought by the Bolivian Import-Export company- Invalsa- based in both La Paz and the United States. This top scoring coffee was from two different farmers who worked together to create the winning lot after each had separately entered their coffee in 2005. “We are involved with coffee in the Yungas region of Bolivia since 1995. In 2005 we participated only as “pickers” then worked very hard for over a year keeping an eye on each other,” explained Raymundo Yanarico during the farmer gathering held in Caranavi, Bolivia to watch the electronic auction.

“We are going to invest this money to improve the quality of our coffee and to have better living conditions for our families. We currently have five people working on our coffee farm and now we'll double this number. We want to tell our fellow coffee producers not to abandon their plantations and to keep up the hard work,” he continued.

Overall prices for this 3rd Cup of Excellence auction averaged $7.31 lb. and $7.66 per lot. The top 5 coffees all sold for over $10.00lb. All of the 26 lots sold for over $4.00lb.

European buyers bought 9 of the winning lots, more than buyers from the US, Canada or Japan. These coffees will be sold to connoisseurs in Norway, Germany, Spain, the UK, Canada, Japan and through small and large roasters worldwide to famous London retailers such as Harrods’s and Fortnum and Mason.

The complete list of buyers and prices as well as detailed farm information for all of the winners can be found on the Cup of Excellence site. www.cupofexcellence.org. This was the 36th program for Cup of Excellence where hundreds of small farmers have received record prices for their exemplary coffees. This Bolivia auction was the last COE auction for 2007 as the Brazil program has been postponed.

Since it’s beginnings in 1999, the Cup of Excellence® program has hosted programs in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Bolivia and Colombia. 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 managed in partnership with CommoditiesOne, a leading software development firm since 2002. For more information about the Cup of Excellence program, to become a member log on to www.cupofexcellence.org.