New Zealand owned and operated coffee company Vivace Espresso has scooped 3 bronze medals in the Golden Bean awards in Australia, the world's largest coffee roasting competition.
Senior roaster Cameron Hoogervorst said the team entered the competition just to give it a go.
“We wanted to test our coffees and see how they would match against our friends across the ditch,” he said. “Preparing for the competition involved our every-day routine of roasting, blending and tasting for continuous improvement.”
While Vivace has entered other international competitions in the past, this was the first time they had entered Golden Bean.
“Unfortunately we didn’t receive the scorecards to see our exact score but we will keep on perfecting our blends and hope to return to the Golden Bean to compete and judge next year because that will assist us in developing our palette and help evolve our coffee. We are always evolving our taste and it is reassuring to get feedback in forums like this that we are on the right track.”
The Golden Bean Awards involved professional roasters blind-tasting blends from Australia and New Zealand and marking them on a points-based scoreboard across ten categories, and against criteria such as sweetness, acidity, body, balance and aftertaste.
The conference, in its twelfth year in Australia, attracts attendance from over 100 coffee roasting businesses and runs a number of educational workshops and social functions. It is also in its fourth year in North America.
