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.
After our green buying team had made initial blind selections from the pool of competition lots, we were delighted to learn that a number of the coffees representing the Central region were submitted by producers from Suaza, which is the home to Divino Niño and many of the producers that we have been featuring on Passenger's menu for a number of years. While there were many names from Suaza that were familiar to Passenger at the competition, we were excited to discover for the first time the name of a young producer, Yoan Arely Toledo, as he took the top spot in the central region of the competition, and seventh palace overall. Yoan comes from a long line of coffee producers at his family’s high-altitude farm, La Palma, where in addition to Pink Bourbon, he also grows varieties F6, Castillo, Catimor, and Gesha. As practiced by many producers in this region, processing at La Palma includes an initial fermentation in whole cherry, followed by a secondary dry-fermentation after pulping, and finally washing and drying on raised beds. Having already found such success despite an early career as a coffee producer, we anticipate many more competition-winning harvests from Yoan in the future, and we’re delighted that he’s already begun to enjoy much-deserved recognition from buyers worldwide.