Coffee Review Launches Kenneth Davids Cup to Honor Global Roasting Excellence

Kenneth Davids has spent decades telling the specialty coffee world which cups are worth paying for. Now Coffee Review, the tasting platform he co-founded, is putting his name on an award designed to do the same thing for roasters.

The inaugural Kenneth Davids Cup was announced this past week, establishing a global competition that will run blind expert tastings across three processing-defined categories: Traditional Washed, Traditional Natural, and Experimental. Roasters in the United States and internationally compete in separate tracks, and entry is free, with each roaster permitted one submission per category.

The submission window opens July 1 and closes July 10, 2026. Winners and finalists will be announced in early August, giving top performers a marketing window timed well ahead of fall trade activity.

The category architecture is deliberate. Traditional Washed explicitly excludes anaerobic or inoculated fermentations, drawing a clean line between coffees processed along conventional timelines and the wave of experimental co-ferments and controlled-environment naturals that have reshaped specialty menus over the past several years. By separating the two rather than forcing them to compete head-to-head, the Cup sidesteps one of the more persistent arguments in the tasting community about whether experimental processing is a distinct discipline or simply a flavor shortcut.

Roasters that finish at the top will have more than a ribbon to show for it. Coffee Review will publish standalone reviews for the highest-ranked coffees, and winners receive a physical award. For roasters who already lean on Coffee Review scores as a retail selling tool, a Cup win backed by a published review represents a concrete marketing asset with staying power.

The program also carries implicit stakes for producers. Coffee Review framed the award around producer-roaster collaboration, signaling that the sourcing story matters alongside roasting execution. As specialty buyers scrutinize origin claims and process transparency with increasing rigor, a blind-tasted award that rewards the full chain from farm to final roast carries weight well beyond a single cupping score. Roasters planning sample allocation and quality-control resources around the July window will need to start that planning now.