Its been a bad day for me

Today was the Guatemalan cup of excellence auction, and for the first time in a long time we were not involved. Well that’s not true we were involved but the buying group fell apart at a price (which happens a lot in these things) and normally I have a back up plan. But one thing that some one said to me stopped me in my tracks. They said to me, is this coffee four times better so worth four times more than the El Bosque you sell or the Entre Rios. Now please don’t get me wrong, you will not find a better and bigger supporter of the cup of excellence program, and both of these coffees are past winners and that’s where the relationship comes from.  Without this competition lots of our fantastic coffees would not have been found and I love finding new coffees that we wouldn’t have found otherwise..

This auction was small and I think that’s because the auction was held very early for Guatemala. Lots of the samples were of course very good, excellent to coin a phrase but I wasn’t wowed enough to start paying huge prices. I wonder how many great coffees may have got missed because they were not quite ready. This year we will have five awesome Guatemalans, all would be in good company with any of the COE samples.

So when the buying group fell apart (for a coffee that was a WOW) should I have taken (IMHO) second choice for a coffee that was equal to what was available, just so I’m involved? Well I decided no, were in the middle of auction season there are three more auctions, with some exiting opportunities in there, and spending on something that’s ok just didn’t feel right. Would I have paid top price for the coffee I thought was worth it? You bet, but today fell away from us.

Auctions are tough and demanding, on money, time and physical energy and when the rewards are equal that’s fine, today was not my day, roll on next week.