Now sharing the Reserve Lot menu with last year's Cup of Excellence winning selection, we’re delighted to offer another beautiful coffee from Cruz Loma, the farm of The Morales Rivera family in Pinchincha, Ecuador. Ecuador, and Cruz Loma in particular, continue to produce some of the finest coffees we get the pleasure of tasting at Passenger. While this 2023 harvest selection was not awarded the Cup of Excellence accolade, we find the unique combination of climate, plant genetics, and processing on display similarly stunning for its impeccable clarity and intriguing flavor complexity.

As with last year’s lot from Cruz Loma, the heady florality we find in the cup profile of this coffee is almost certainly attributable, in part, to its varieties, which have come to be hallmarks of the finest Ecuadorian coffees grown in this region. While Typica Mejorado (usually translated as ‘Improved’ Typica) is the most commonly used name for the Mejorado variety, the name is somewhat misleading due to the fact that genetic testing has indicated that the variety is not a Typica at all. The variety was developed on an experimental plot owned by Nestlé and is actually a cross of a Bourbon-type variety and an Ethiopian landrace - providing some explanation for the elegant layers of florals, citrus, and ripe fruity notes that Mejorado lots often exhibit in the cup. While very little is yet known about the Sidra variety, what we do know suggests that its story is similar to that of Mejorado. Originally believed to be a cross between Bourbon and Typica, testing done by World Coffee Research has shown Sidra to also be genetically similar to Ethiopian landrace varieties.

This fresh harvest lot from Cruz Loma is significantly more price accessible than last year’s Cup of Excellence winner, hopefully allowing more people the opportunity to taste the truly remarkable efforts of the Morales Rivera family. Nonetheless, we continue to see value in the prices commanded by the Cup of Excellence as a net positive for producers and the industry at large. Such prices incentivize farmers to carefully produce the best possible coffee to submit to the competition, thus treating the crop as a truly specialty item and further distancing and distinguishing specialty coffee from commodity coffee and commodity-driven approaches to producing and selling coffee. Furthermore, it normalizes high prices for coffee - a necessity if coffee production is to continue into the foreseeable future.