Two years ago, Passenger’s green-buying team had the privilege of joining the inaugural ‘Copa de Oro’ regional cupping event in Huila, Colombia, put on by our import partners at Osito Coffee. For a number of years prior, Passenger had participated in a similar cupping competition from this region in Colombia known as the ‘Copa Suaceña’. Each annual edition of the "Suaza Cup" pursued the goal of identifying and recognizing the highest quality coffees produced by the Divino Niño producer group: a community of farmers that has been one of Passenger's Foundational Partners since 2018. It was with the first Copa de Oro event that the Suaza Cup grew into a broader and more ambitious regional cupping event, and we were delighted to once again participate as cupping judges during this most recent harvest year.

In addition to remaining open to submissions from all the familiar names we've come to know and love in Divino Niño, the larger Copa de Oro competition features an expanded regional scope in order to welcome entrants from other sub-regions of western, southern, and central Huila that are areas of particular focus for our partners at Osito. Twenty lots from each of these broad geographical regions were screened and pre-selected by Osito's Colombia-based cupping team. The 60 lots that were entered into the competition were rigorously evaluated by an international team of judges (from Colombia, Japan, Canada, Ireland, and the U.S.) across three days of blind cupping. At the end of competition week, the top 20 lots were cupped one final time to determine the ranking for the top 5 coffees from each of the three regions. And when all was said and done, the highest-scoring coffee among these regional champions was ultimately recognized as the overall winner of the inaugural Copa de Oro.

This coffee, from producer Juan Jimenez, took first place in the ‘Southern’ region of the Copa de Oro, and fourth place in the competition overall. It’s the second year in a row that Señor Jimenez has had a winning entry, and we’re delighted to be featuring his coffee again for a second consecutive year. Señor Jimenez's farm, El Porvenir, is located in the municipality of Palestina, about 2 hours drive to the southwest of Suaza, where our friends and partners of the Divino Niño producer group are located. The size of the farm is 16 hectares (nearly 40 acres), which is considerably larger in size and production capacity than many coffee farms in Colombia (2-5 hectare farms are quite common in many coffee regions). While multiple arabica varieties, including caturra and variedad Colombia, are cultivated at El Porvenir, the lot that Juan Jimenez chose to submit to the Copa de Oro was a single variety separation of pink bourbon. While it is not always the case that larger coffee farms correlate to higher quality coffee, Juan Jimenez and his wife Leidy are highly adept at managing the large team of pickers and day laborers that they rely on throughout the harvest. This fine competition lot is a fitting tribute to their meticulous approach and ongoing commitment to specialty production.