In 2018, AVPA is organizing a first "Locally roasted coffees" International Contest AVPA in Amsterdam with a specifically gathered Dutch jury. In addition AVPA is working to organize national juries in Colombia, Cameroon, Honduras or Indonesia to judge locally roasted coffees...
Why this desire for organization of national juries out of France? Despite the arrogance, often lent to the French, at AVPA we know that French "good" taste is not universal. Our apprehension of the products, the way we implement them and our pleasure all first depend on our eating habits. Just look how certain national products are struggling to find an audience outside their region of origin, whether it is fermented cheeses or olive oils, not to mention the ways of espresso preparation that vary often from a city to another whether in France or Italy… If the technical experts work should remain centralized since it is a work of classification, selection and elimination of defects, AVPA can make room for national expression of the gourmet juries for the organoleptic classification.
And let's start with the Netherlands where we met Harm Jansen who welcomed with enthusiastic support this idea and is leading a pioneering work with a locally roasted coffees marketing company there. He will organize a Dutch gourmet jury who will appreciate per his own tastes the coffees which already passed the technical selection of the first Parisian jury.
This year, competitors can now register their coffees in Paris and Amsterdam.
Organizing AVPA contests in coffee production countries corresponds to our concern to offer to a maximum of locally roasted coffee producers the ability to deal locally with co-workers, friends, neighbors, and to offer economic conditions better adapted to the purchasing power of small producers. All of this is to judge their coffees, not according to international taste criteria which are at least foreign for them, but according to what often ancestral local experience, taught them in the national coffee community. Then we will confront the local tastes to the consumer countries tastes to find markets which will better appreciate them.