In late May as the seasons in the tropics made their biannual progression from dry to rainy, dozens of respected coffee buyers, roasters and cuppers descended along with the heavy clouds that rolled into the Central Valley in the midst of the mountains surrounding San Jose, Costa Rica. The coffee professionals gathered from around the world to the modern campus of INCAE, a graduate business school some 20 miles outside of the nation’s capital, for the first ever Costa Rican Cup of Excellence (CoE).

Forty coffees from growing regions scattered all over Costa Rica were submitted for the CoE. To make it through to the final round and earn a shot at the national title, a coffee must first pass through several rounds of cupping beginning with the national jury, and then it’s on to the international jury. At every stage along the way the coffee is cupped in a controlled, scientific manner where the process and treatment is repeated exactly for each coffee. To ensure the efficacy of the process in Costa Rica, the whole progression was overseen by an auditing firm, McKenzie & Associates and the Sustainable Markets Development Center, with the sort of zeal, accuracy and secrecy that one could only hope national elections might match. Such attention to detail, however, is one of the primary reasons that the CoE has been able to grow as a respected brand signifying exceptional coffees all around the world.

Susie Spindler, executive director of the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE)—the nonprofit that owns and operates the CoE—explained, “A Cup of Excellence coffee is one that is a farm-certified, award-winning coffee that has been cupped at least five different times by three different juries and received a score of 84 or higher.”

The success of the CoE as a brand is easy to see. One of the Costa Rican competition jury members, Bernd Braune, a roaster/retailer from Munich, Germany, said, “We can retail a CoE coffee for more than two or three times what coffee normally goes for if we can tell the customer where it comes from (down to the farmer’s name who grew it) and how it was grown.”

Echoing that sentiment, Spindler said, “The most important thing about the CoE is that it gets consumers excited about a great cup of coffee.”

But that’s only half the story. The greatest thing about the CoE from a producer’s viewpoint must be the recognition they receive and of course the prices the auction brings. During the event’s closing ceremony, Ronald Monge Valverde, owner of the winning farm in the Costa Rica competition, Cerro Paldo, grabbed his brother in an expressive embrace as they shouted with joy when their victory was announced. When their lot went to auction soon after, it fetched the incredible price of $21.35 per pound. That’s the kind of price that can change a farm, a community, a country.

Although this marked the country’s first CoE, Costa Rica is no stranger to coffee auctions. For the last several years, the country’s national specialty coffee association hosted its own auction, the Crop of Gold. The competition, however, suffered from a couple of problems. Without the CoE brand behind it, the winning coffees brought in less at auction than they might have as CoE coffees, and marketing the auction winners to consumers was more difficult for buyers because they were perhaps less familiar with the Crop of Gold organization. Secondly, and a far more difficult problem to overcome in the long run, was the structure of the competition and how it related to the very land that grew the coffee.