Costa Rica's 2024 COE rankings are released, introducing the award-winning variety San Roque

CoE (Cup of Excellence) is one of the most authoritative boutique coffee competitions in the world, and it is also the first global Internet auction platform for award-winning coffee, which was founded in 1999 by the Coffee Excellence Alliance (ACE).

Recently, Costa Rica held the 2024 Excellence Cup, and the results of the competition have now been announced. In this COE competition, it is also divided into three groups according to different treatment methods.

Traditional washing group (Traditional Washed Processes)

Traditional honey treatment and sun treatment group (Traditional Honey&Natural Processes)

Experimental treatment group (Experimental)

As can be seen in this COE competition, most of the participants are Rosa Gesha, but there are also some common coffee varieties such as Typica and Kadouai Catuai, as well as a relatively new coffee variety that is Saint Locke San Roque, San Roque is a rare variety that has often appeared on the Costa Rica COE list since 2018.

Saint Locke San Roque

For the record, Saint Locke San Roque first appeared on the COE list in 2018, when he ranked 14th in COE in 2018, from Finca Leoncio Manor in the Central Valley region (Valley Central).

The owner, Manuel Antonio Barrantes Zu ñ iga, said the owner inherited it from his grandfather, Leoncio, and named the estate after Leoncio, which at the time mainly grew Villa Sarchi and SL28 varieties.

In 2015, Finca Leoncio Manor took part in the COE competition at that time, but the owner Antonio did not know exactly what kind was handed over, so he handed it over in the name of SL28.

As a result, the variety attracted a lot of attention when it won the 2015 Costa Rican COE championship with a score of 91.46, but they found that the champion bean was not like the traditional SL28, but did not tell what kind of variety it was.

Until 2018, after genetic testing, it was found to be a variant of SL28, so it was named because it first appeared as San Roque in central Costa Rica. And, because of the 2015 award, the neighbors of Finca Leoncio Manor came to ask for bean sprouts, and Finca Leoncio generously distributed them everywhere, so the coffee varieties began to be planted all over the coffee houses near the central valley where Finca Leoncio Manor is located, and Saint Locke San Roque varieties have been seen repeatedly in COE this year.

However, the flavor of San Roque was similar to that of SL28, except that the top tender leaves of Saint Locke San Roque were light brown, while those of SL28 were green. The popularity of St. Locke's San Roque variety is related to his ability to adapt to high-altitude plantations and excellent cup flavor quality. According to the flavor notes of previous COE reviews, St. Locke coffee has a very complex comprehensive fruit flavor, whether it is sun exposure, water washing, or honey treatment.