Cup of Excellence Indonesia · 2021–2026

Four editions of Cup of Excellence Indonesia, and what changed

Every lot that placed in Cup of Excellence Indonesia, 129 lots from 4 editions, read one edition at a time: where they grew, how they were processed, which varieties they were, and what they sold for.

The competition publishes the placed lots only, so this is a story about the winners, not about every coffee entered. Of the 129 lots, 31 are National Winners, a tier below a Cup of Excellence place, and a few winning coffees were sold in two halves (1A and 1B), so they count as two lots.

Part 1: Where it grows

The map, one village, and the 9 provinces the winners came from.

Chapter 1: 129 winning lots

32 lots placed in the first edition, in 2021, from 8 provinces. Each dot is one lot.

35 in 2022, from 6 provinces.

27 in 2023, from 7 provinces.

35 in 2026. 129 winning lots in all, from 9 provinces.

Chapter 2: One village, and its cooperative

23 of the 129 winning lots tie to one village in Aceh Tengah, Pantan Musara, or to the cooperative many of its farmers belong to, Koperasi Ribang Gayo Musara: 17 to the village itself, and 6 only through the cooperative's name.

In 2021 the village grew the winner: Dilen Ali Gogo's honey at 89.28, sold for US$80 a pound, the highest price in the record.

In 2022, 10 of the 35 placed lots were entered under the cooperative's name, among them the winner: Bahagia Ginting, a member, at 90.59, sold for US$40.20 a pound. The record does not place this member's farm in the village.

By edition: 4 in 2021, 13 in 2022, 2 in 2023, 4 in 2026. In 2026 the village is named on 4 lots, 3 of them National Winners.

Before 2026 the results print the province only, so a lot counts here through its farm name, its cooperative, or the producer's farm-directory profile.

Chapter 3: Where the winners come from

The same lots, sorted: a row for each province, a column for each edition. In 2021, 8 provinces placed.

Aceh peaked in 2022, with 22 of the 35 places.

West Java went from 10 places in 2021 to 17 in 2026. One district, Pangalengan, went from 1 to 6.

South Sulawesi and East Java placed in every edition before 2026, and in none in 2026.

In 2026, 5 provinces placed, and two of them hold 83% of the lots. Two provinces also held most of them in 2022 (77%) and 2023 (52%); in 2021, the edition with the most provinces (8), they held 56%.

Counts include National Winners, whose number varies by edition (6, 12, 2, 11). Pangalengan before 2026 is counted through producers' profiles, so earlier editions may be undercounted.

Part 2: What's in the cup

The scores, what a 90 asks for, the processes and the varieties.

Chapter 4: The top moved; the middle did not

Each dot is one coffee that won a Cup of Excellence place, by its score; a coffee sold in two halves is one dot. The axis starts at 87, the score a coffee needs to place; National Winners score below it and wait in the row underneath. In 2021 the best coffee scored 89.28, and none reached 90.

In 2023 the top coffee scored 91.41, the highest in the record, and 4 coffees scored 90 or more (7 lots: some were sold in two halves). In 2026 the top was 90.25. Each edition has its own jury, so the top moves; it does not climb in a straight line.

The middle barely moved: the median coffee scored 87.82 in 2021 and 87.80 in 2026, a little above the 87 needed to place. The movement is at the top.

Chapter 5: What makes a 90

Every coffee is cupped blind, round after round, by a national and then an international jury. Each cupper scores 8 qualities from 0 to 8: from unacceptable (0) through ordinary (4) and fine (6) to great (8). Then 36 points are added, so the most a coffee can score is 100.

So a 90 is 54 of 64 points: on average 6.75 on every quality, between fine (6) and great (8), nearer fine. 87, the score a coffee needs in the final round to win a place, is 6.38 on average. A zero on any quality scores the whole coffee zero, and defects take points away.

Flavour is only one of the 8. Clean cup asks whether the coffee is free of any taint or fault. Sweetness, the form says, follows how evenly ripe the cherries were at harvest. And flavour itself, it adds, is brought out by the care of the picker and the skill of the processor. A 90 starts on the tree.

A coffee at 90 or more receives a Presidential Award. Coffees at 90 or more, by edition: 0 (2021), 1 (2022), 4 (2023), 2 (2026).

From the Cup of Excellence cupping form and its explanation, and the competition's rules. The averages are worked out from the form's arithmetic; the record does not publish each quality's score.

The cupping form and its explanation · The current form · The rules and rounds

Chapter 6: How the winners were processed

In 2021, every winning lot was one of 4 plain methods: natural, washed, honey or wet-hulled. Natural was 50% of the lots.

In 2022, lots with anaerobic, carbonic maceration and other fermentations first appear among the placed lots: 8 lots with a treatment. By 2023, 10 different process names were printed.

In 2026 the competition prints "Experimental" as a label of its own, on 22 of the 35 lots. That is a new label, not the same count as before, so those lots are ringed with a dashed line. Natural is 63% of the lots.

The winners' processes, edition by edition: honey (2021), natural (2022), carbonic maceration natural (2023), experimental – washed/honey (2026).

Processes are grouped by their base method. 2026 prints washed and honey as one category, so they are counted together in every edition.

Chapter 7: What stayed, what came, what left

Each row is a variety; each dot, the lots that carry it. 10 varieties placed in every edition. Ateng is the most frequent: in 21 of the 35 lots of 2026.

Some came: Timtim, never in more than 2 lots an edition before, is in 11 in 2026; and Catimor, never in more than 1 lot an edition before, is in 8 in 2026.

Some left: Gayo 1, absent in 2026. New in 2026: Java and Komasti.

Most winning lots are blends of varieties. In 2026 the average lot names 3.0, more than in any edition before (2.3, 2.5, 2.0); 3 of its 35 lots are a single variety.

Spellings are folded to one name (S-795, S 795 and Lini S-795 are S795); "other" is not counted as a variety. The editions are of different sizes, written under each year. A variety printed with another in brackets, such as "Ateng Super (Catimor)", counts as both, so a rise can partly be a change of label. 2026 also lists small parts of a blend, some at a few percent, which lifts its average.

Part 3: What it sells for

The auction: its prices, what a point was worth, and who bought.

Chapter 8: Prices fell from 2021 to 2023

The median price of a Cup of Excellence place, a pound, at the competition's auction: US$22.80 in 2021, US$14.10 in 2022, US$10.90 in 2023.

Score still pays at the top: in each edition the highest-priced lot sold for 2.9 to 4.2 times the median. Below the top three, it depends on the edition: in 2021, a higher score fetched more; in 2022, a higher score fetched a little more; in 2023, score and price did not move together.

The Cup of Excellence auction's total fell from US$360,343 in 2021 to US$193,840 in 2023. The record does not say why.

2026: the auction is on 1 December 2026. This chapter fills in after it.

Prices as printed, US$ a pound, over the Cup of Excellence places sold at the competition's auction. National Winners are sold at a separate auction and are left out. Lot sizes and buyers differ from year to year.

Chapter 9: What a point was worth

Each dot is a Cup of Excellence lot sold at the auction: its score along the bottom, its price a pound up the side. The line is the trend. In 2021, each point of score was worth about US$20 a pound.

In 2022, a point was worth about US$6 a pound.

In 2023, a point was worth about US$7 a pound.

In 2023, the top 3 coffees were each sold in two halves (ringed). Leave them out, and among the 19 lots sold whole a point was worth about US$0: score and price did not move together. The best lot sold whole, #4 at 90.06, fetched US$10; the halves of #3, at the same score, fetched US$26.25 and US$27.30.

By weight, the auction paid US$65 a kilo in 2021, US$35 a kilo in 2022 and US$32 a kilo in 2023, while the coffee sold went from 5,532 kg to 6,960 kg and 6,050 kg. The record does not say why.

The worth of a point is the slope of a straight line through each auction's lots, US$ a pound per point of score. The auctions had 26, 23 and 25 lots: enough to describe each one, not to make a rule.

Chapter 10: Who buys

Each bar is one auction's money, split by buyer. In 2021 the three biggest buyers paid 42% of it, among 34 buyers; in 2023, 32%, among 46.

One buyer bought at every auction: Wataru, 16 lots and 18% of all the money paid across the 3. The next buyer paid 5%.

Its lots sat lower in the ranking, and sold for less: a median of US$19.10, US$9.70 and US$8.80 a pound, against US$24.25, US$14.60 and US$11.80 for everyone else's lots.

The exception is the top: in 2021 it bought the winner, at US$80 a pound, printed as "Wataru for YAMATOYA COFFEE".

A buyer here is the name printed before any "for …" (an importer buying for a roaster), without "Co., Ltd." and the like. A lot bought by several is split evenly between them, as the results do not print each one's part. The results print no buyer's country, so none is named here. Cup of Excellence places only.

Part 4: Who grows it

The producers, their farms, and the winner of 2026.

Chapter 11: Who keeps winning

At least 17 producers placed in more than one edition. Each row is one of them; each dot, a place.

Dandy Dharmawan (Ijen Lestari) placed #4 in 2021 and #15 in 2022, and won in 2023 at 91.41.

No one has stayed on top. 7 times a producer came back after finishing in the top four, and every time they placed lower: #1 then #8, #2 then #16, #3 then #18, #3 then #17, #4 then #15, #4 then #11 and #4 then National Winner.

16 producers first placed as National Winners before 2026. 1 of them have since won a Cup of Excellence place.

Koro buys from 3 producers in the record: Dandy Dharmawan, Yolan Tirta and Sukri of Sisola Specialty Coffee (National Winner in 2021, 2022 and 2023). Yolan Tirta placed once, so is not in the chart. None placed in 2026.

A producer is followed across editions through a farm-directory profile. A few names recur without a shared profile and are not joined, so the true count may be a little higher. A different jury cups each edition, so a lower place is not a worse coffee. 2026's National Winners cannot be followed yet.

Chapter 12: Small farms on the podium

35 producers' profiles give the size of the farm. Each dot is one, on a scale where each step is ten times the last. Half farm 2 ha or less, and 69% farm 3 ha or less.

Every one of them who finished in the top three farms 3 ha or less: Ita Rosita, 0.4 ha (#2, 2021), Marselina Walu, 1 ha (#2, 2023), Dilen Ali Gogo, 1.5 ha (#1, 2021), Roberto Bagus Syahputra, 2 ha (#3, 2021), Bahagia Ginting, 3 ha (#1, 2022) and Dandy Dharmawan, 3 ha (#1, 2023).

The largest farm, 1,200 ha, placed #8 at best. Size does not set the score: in this record, larger farms score neither higher nor lower. The podium is small because most of the farms are.

Farm sizes as the producers' farm-directory profiles print them. Profiles exist only for producers who placed before 2026; the 2026 results print no farm size. Each producer is placed by their best result.

Chapter 13: Congratulations, Edward Ken Tirtadarma

Edward Ken Tirtadarma, of the farm Ating Hermawan in Sindangkerta, Bandung Barat, West Java, won Cup of Excellence Indonesia 2026 with 90.25: an experimental washed/honey lot of Ateng, Bourbon, P88 and Typica. It is the first win in the record for West Java.

Congratulations to every producer who placed in 2026: 24 Cup of Excellence places and 11 National Winners. They go to auction on 1 December 2026.

The latest edition: 2026 · Every edition, compared · The map of Indonesian coffee