Specialty Coffees

The main institution to refer to when talking about specialty coffee is the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), which defines international standards for coffee evaluation according to a codified tasting card that establishes at the end of the analysis a score to the coffee submitted for evaluation: from 90-100 points outstanding; from 85-89.99 points excellent; from 80-84.99 points very good; below 80.0 points not Specialty.

So what is specialty coffee? A specialty coffee is a coffee that has scored at least 80 out of 100, has zero primary defects and at most five secondary defects. This is the coding but let’s go further and try together to find out what really lies beneath the numbers and tables.
Specialty Coffee is essentially a vision, a vision you will say? How do you mean? The vision of a fairer trade: fair to those who produce this wonderful product that we drink daily, fair to the environment, and fair to our health. A product that comes from the constant search for quality in all its stages of development: quality (not quantity) of production on the plantation at origin, quality of roasting, quality of packaging, and quality in extraction, be it at home or in the cafeteria.

Every single step in the process is crucial to maintaining the product’s characteristics of excellence and making it a unique experience for our palate.