A coffee grown high in the mountains of Los Santos sold for $200.10 per pound at Costa Rica’s 2026 Cup of Excellence auction, anchoring the strongest set of results the competition has produced in the country in recent years.
The winning coffee came from Finca RÃo Blanco in Copey de Dota and was produced by Alejandra Cordero Solano. Enwan Coffee purchased two equal portions of the lot, paying $52,936.46 for each. Together, the 529.1 pounds (240 kilograms) of green coffee generated $105,872.92. The washed Java variety was grown at roughly 1,950 meters (6,400 feet) above sea level and scored 91.36 points from Cup of Excellence judges, the highest mark awarded to any Costa Rican coffee this year.
The $200.10 bid was the highest price paid in the 2026 auction, though it did not surpass Costa Rica’s record for an individual Cup of Excellence lot. That mark remains the $300.09 per pound paid in 2018 for a honey-processed Geisha from Finca Don Cayito, also in Copey de Dota — a price that was a world record at the time.
The bigger story of 2026 was the auction as a whole. According to figures from the Asociación de Cafés Finos de Costa Rica (SCACR), which runs the competition with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence, the 30 winning coffees generated $797,967.63 at an average price of $45.53 per pound. That average was nearly 48% higher than the $30.77 recorded in 2025, while total sales rose about 14% from $700,062.72. Buyers placed 4,726 bids during the international online auction held July 9, up from 4,328 the previous year.
RÃo Blanco’s winning lot was divided into two portions of 264.55 pounds (120 kilograms), with Enwan Coffee paying the same $200.10 per pound for both. The figure was more than double the top price of the 2025 auction, when the best lot reached $91 per pound.
Café SolÃs & Cordero, the family business behind RÃo Blanco, was founded in 2018. Family members take part throughout the production process, from managing the coffee plants and soil to processing and preparing the beans for export. The farm grows Java, Catuaà and Geisha varieties under a model built around soil health and long-term conservation. Cordero Solano also placed third in the honey and natural category with a honey-processed Geisha from RÃo Blanco that scored 90.61 points and sold for $48.60 per pound, generating just over $24,100.
Los Santos dominated the competition, producing the winning coffee in all three categories. Las Nubes, operated by Alex Ureña MarÃn, led the honey and natural category with a Geisha that sold for $95 per pound. Las Margaritas Veintiséis, produced by Emmanuel SolÃs Porras, won the experimental fermentation category, with prices of $110.40 and $110.50 per pound after its lot was split in two. The 30 lots that reached the auction were divided among eight washed coffees, 12 honey and naturals, and 10 experimental fermentations.
Cup of Excellence coffees go through several rounds of blind tasting before reaching the auction. Only coffees scoring at least 87 points qualify, while those reaching 90 points receive the Presidential Award, the competition’s highest recognition. Ten Costa Rican coffees passed 90 points this year, compared with four in 2025.
The prices do not represent what growers receive for ordinary commercial coffee. Cup of Excellence lots are small, carefully separated batches bought by specialty roasters looking for distinctive flavors, detailed production records and a direct connection to the farm. Benchmark arabica futures on the ICE exchange in New York have traded near $3 per pound in recent sessions, meaning the RÃo Blanco lot fetched roughly 65 times the going rate for conventional coffee.
Those premiums can still have a wider effect. Auction proceeds largely return to the winning producers, rewarding the additional work involved in selective harvesting, processing and quality control. Recognition can also lead to longer-term relationships with international buyers, allowing farms to sell future harvests outside the volatile bulk coffee market — a meaningful hedge in a year when arabica futures have swung sharply on Brazilian harvest news.
For Costa Rica, the auction reinforces a national brand built on quality rather than volume, and it lands squarely in a region that already draws visitors. Dota, Tarrazú and León Cortés — the areas that make up Los Santos — sit within a two- to three-hour drive of San José and have built a growing rural tourism circuit around farm tours, cupping sessions and mountain lodges.
A $200-a-pound coffee may exist only in a few hundred pounds, but the attention that follows it helps position Los Santos and Costa Rica’s other growing regions among the world’s leading specialty coffee origins, and gives travelers one more reason to make the drive south.
