After last year’s lucky first edition, Coffee Experience is back, the largest coffee tasting event in the world. It will be held from the 8th to the 12th of April in Verona,at the Agrifood Club, the salon hosted within Vinitaly, the most important exhibition dedicated to wines and distillates. Even this year it will be possible to taste 35 different coffees available for the over 100,000 visitors that every year come to the exhibition in Verona.

"Last year we reached more than 7,000 tasting cards – says Luigi Odello, president of the Italian Tasters, VeronaFiere’s partner in the event – A precious amount of data that has evidenced industry trends. This year’s second edition will be an further test to verify the public’s tastes and preferences".

"Coffee Experience also represents a showroom of international importance for participating companies – continues Odello – The presence of foreign buyers and operators is in fact strong, strategic presence in a moment in which attention for expresso is growing abroad, and which in some nations has even surpassed traditional preparations".

Coffee Experience benefits the patronage of the Italian Espresso National Institute and of International Institute of Coffee Tasters.

The roasters that would like to participate with one or more products can write to claudia.ferretti@italiantasters.com or call 030 397308.

In November 2008, there will be the second edition of International Coffee Tasting, the only one international competition where coffee is tasted according to the scientific rules of sensory analysis. While for wine there are many competitions and they are now part of its history and tradition, in the coffee sector competitions are often focused on the barista and almost never on the product. Coffee Taster is aimed at promoting a competition between the coffees from all over the world as to highlight the degree of pleasure offered by the product that comes from well renowned areas, that is cultivated with all the necessary attention, thoroughly processed, skilfully selected, properly roasted and, when needed, finely blended. It puts emphasis on the most prestigious products and points out to the consumers the best products available on the market, thus stimulating producers to pursue quality in its most modern sense: customer satisfaction. International Coffee Tasting 2008 will be organised, just as the previous edition, by the International Institute of Coffee Tasters with the technical and scientific support of the Taster Study Center. Single origin coffees or blended, in beans, ground or in single dose for espresso, moka or filter will be admitted to the competition. During the 2006 edition, 81 coffees have been evaluated by three commissions of expert tasters. Medals have been awarded based on threshold scores in full compliance with the competitions rules which established that the coffees which could be awarded a prize had to account for maximum 30% of all participants. It was a very tight competition and some products did not win a medal just for a few tenths of a point. There was a very strict selection that awarded prizes only to high-level products. The announcement of the competition and the application form are available at www.coffeetasters.org. For further information please write to info@coffeetasters.org.