Producers (27)
- Abner Samuel Zavala — The second-generation Nueva Segovia producer who has placed at the Nicaragua Cup of Excellence four times across eight years — fourth in 2018, second in 2021, first among the washed coffees in 2025 at $66 a pound, and first again in 2026.
- Aida Batlle — The Salvadoran producer whose Finca Kilimanjaro won El Salvador’s first Cup of Excellence in 2003 at a then-record $14.06 a pound — the result that made the country a specialty origin, and the start of a career built on processing experiments rather than varieties.
- Basha Bekele — The smallholder farmer in Bensa, Sidama whose natural-process lot won the 2024 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence and sold for $445 a pound — the highest price ever paid at a COE auction anywhere.
- Carlos Aguilera Franceschi — The third-generation Panamanian producer who turned his grandmother’s farm, Carmen Estate, into a Geisha name — and ran it through the 2023 Best of Panama record and a sale to Chinese owners.
- Daniel Peterson — The third-generation Peterson who separated Hacienda La Esmeralda’s coffee lots by plot and helped isolate the Geisha that stunned Best of Panama in 2004.
- David Pohl — The American green-coffee consultant who was Equator Coffees’ director of coffee and is one of the four owners of Finca Sophia in Panama — today a senior consultant at Boot Coffee on international trade and quality.
- Don Pachi Serracín — The Panamanian producer who first brought Geisha seed from Costa Rica to Boquete in 1963.
- Edgar Moreno — The Colombian quality man who ran quality management for the national growers’ federation and then, from 2008, became the on-the-ground partner in a Japanese roastery’s coffee farm in Cauca.
- Erwin Mierisch — The Nicaraguan coffee grower who also runs the competition — a fourth-generation Fincas Mierisch producer who spent a decade as Cup of Excellence’s operations manager and is now Executive Director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence.
- Esayas Beriso — The Ethiopian producer behind the Boku and Buku Sayisa coffees of Hambela Wamena, Guji — a former government clerk who left his job in 2009 to farm coffee at 2,350 m, and now runs a washing station that buys cherry from the farmers around him.
- Graciano Cruz — The Boquete agronomist who built a coffee farm that uses no water at all to process its cherries — and turned honey and natural drying into a Panamanian speciality.
- Henrique Sloper — The third-generation Brazilian producer who runs Camocim Estate in Espírito Santo — winner of Cup of Excellence Brazil Naturals 2017 at 93.60 points and $90.20 a pound, and the man behind Jacu Bird coffee.
- Jamison Savage — The American-born producer behind Finca Deborah in Volcán, Panama, and the Savage Coffees brand — a name attached to more world barista stages than almost any other single grower, and to the spread of carbonic maceration in coffee.
- Jean Paul Langenstein — The former roaster who became farm manager of Panama’s Carmen Estate — the technical hand behind its hot-and-cold fermented Geisha lots, and the producer behind Gato Grande.
- Jorge Raúl Rivera — The Salvadoran farmer who planted Pacamara under pine shade in northern Chalatenango with the stated aim of winning the Cup of Excellence — and who died in May 2013, a year before his farm Santa Rosa won it for the first time.
- Kelly Hartmann — Third-generation Panamanian coffee grower — one of five siblings who inherited Finca Hartmann in Santa Clara, and the farm manager who runs the award-winning Finca Sophia on the ground.
- Kenean Assefa Dukem — The Sidama producer whose anaerobic 74112 lot came second at the 2022 Ethiopia Cup of Excellence on 90.25 points and sold for $189.10 a pound — the highest price ever paid for that variety.
- Mauricio Salaverria — The Salvadoran producer who took three of the top seven places at the 2015 Cup of Excellence El Salvador with three different farms in one year — a fifth-generation grower from Ataco who left the commodity market in 2005 and became the country’s best-known name in natural and honey processing.
- Nestor Lasso — The young Colombian producer behind Finca El Diviso near Pitalito, Huila — a farm that went from family smallholding to competition-coffee supplier in about five years, on the back of tightly engineered fermentations.
- Olman Uriel Sauceda Chávez — The Nicaraguan producer and career cupper whose honey-processed Geisha from Finca Elite scored 91.77 at the 2025 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence — the highest score in the whole competition — and then finished tenth the following year.
- Pacas family — The Salvadoran growing family a whole coffee variety is named after. Five generations in Santa Ana, nineteen farms, one central mill — and the odd position of being famous for a plant rather than for a coffee.
- Peterson family — The Swedish-American family behind Hacienda La Esmeralda in Boquete, Panama, whose separated Geisha lot in 2004 created the modern ultra-premium coffee market.
- Price Peterson — The second-generation owner of Hacienda La Esmeralda who steered the family farm from dairy into world-class coffee.
- Ramón Jarquín — The Matagalpa smallholder whose Maracaturra lot “Solidaridad” took second place in the 2025 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence and sold for $14 a pound — roughly ten times what he had been getting for the same coffee.
- Ratibor Hartmann — The Panamanian grower who turned 100 hectares of inherited rainforest in Santa Clara, Chiriquí into Finca Hartmann — the second-generation founder of one of Panama’s pioneering coffee families.
- Sergio Noé Ortez Ortez — The Nueva Segovia producer who has placed in the Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence across four different decades of the competition — from tenth in 2012 to second in 2025 — almost always with Pacamara, and almost always selling to Japan.
- Wilford Lamastus — The Boquete producer behind Elida Estate’s record-breaking Geisha lots, and a leading figure in Panama’s specialty coffee scene.