Spirit Origin Coffee, a specialty roastery based in Roatán, Honduras, won the #1 lot at the 2026 Honduras Cup of Excellence auction for the second consecutive year. The coffee is a Natural Parainema from Finca La Loma in the Santa Bárbara highlands, grown by Ottoniel Sagastume Pineda and scored at 89.14 points by the international jury. Parainema is a disease-resistant variety bred in Honduras, less widely known than Gesha but capable of producing deeply complex cups when grown at altitude with attentive processing. Spirit Origin ships internationally, with delivery to the United States, Europe, and worldwide via DHL from Honduras.
A direct link to the 2026 winning lot will be added once it is available for purchase.
The Winner
Spirit Origin is a specialty roastery and importer operating from Roatán, a Caribbean island that is part of Honduras’s Bay Islands. Their model is built around sourcing and roasting at origin, keeping more of the value chain in the country. Winning the #1 Cup of Excellence lot from Honduras two years running is a rare achievement; it signals both the caliber of the coffees they seek and a competitive presence at auction that few single-origin roasters can match.
Finca La Loma sits in Santa Bárbara, the department that consistently produces some of Honduras’s highest-scoring competition lots. Ottoniel Sagastume Pineda has farmed the land for 17 years, cultivating his Parainema under shade in a region where altitude and rich volcanic soil do much of the work. His 2026 lot was processed as a Natural: the whole cherry dried in the sun before milling, a method that amplifies sweetness and adds a fruit-forward intensity that washed coffees rarely achieve. Parainema was developed in Honduras by IHCAFE specifically for resistance to coffee leaf rust, but when grown in the right conditions it produces a clean, structured cup that competes directly with more celebrated varieties.
The Cup of Excellence is run by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) and is widely regarded as the most rigorous national coffee competition in the world. Submitted lots are evaluated multiple times by national and international panels of professional cuppers, with only coffees scoring above 87 points advancing to the online auction. The 2026 Honduras auction drew buyers from across the world; Spirit Origin’s winning bid of $28.40/lb reflected the quality of the lot and the competition for it.
For more on the Cup of Excellence and past winning lots, visit our Cup of Excellence page.