Origin record
Honduras
A top competition lot at $28.40 a pound - nine times the C market, and a seventh of what the same season paid in Costa Rica.
Commonly got wrong
Parainema is a Honduran-bred variety and is frequently mistaken for an imported one. A 2026 competition-winning natural Parainema scored 89.14, which is a useful counter to the assumption that locally bred rust-resistant material cannot cup well.
Honduras is useful on this site as a control on the auction numbers. Its 2026 Cup of Excellence was a record year by its own standards, and its top lot still came in an order of magnitude below Costa Rica’s.
The 2026 top lot
A natural-process Parainema from Finca La Loma in Santa Barbara, produced by Ottoniel Sagastume Pineda and scored 89.14 by the international jury, took the number one position at $28.40 per pound. The auction as a whole set a record average for the country.
Against a C market near $3.08, that is roughly nine times the commodity benchmark. Against Costa Rica’s $200.10 top lot in the same season it is about a seventh. Both figures are competition auction results for national-winning lots. The basis is identical; the numbers are not close. This is why the ladder on this site records a range for the auction basis rather than a single representative figure.
Parainema is Honduran
Parainema is a Sarchimor-derived variety bred in Honduras, and it is regularly assumed to be an import. Rust-resistant material carries a reputation for cupping poorly, largely earned by earlier introgressed varieties. An 89.14 on a competition form is a data point against that assumption, though a competition-winning lot of any variety is selected material and should not be read as typical.
Qualifications on the record
- What the price actually refers to
- The 2026 Cup of Excellence top lot reached $28.40 per pound - a natural Parainema from Finca La Loma in Santa Barbara, scored 89.14. That is roughly nine times the C market on a comparable day, and a fraction of what a Costa Rican or Ethiopian top lot fetched in the same season.
- How the grades nest
- As in Costa Rica, Strictly High Grown is an altitude class rather than a cup-quality one.
- Harvest qualification
- Santa Barbara and the higher western departments run later than the rest.
- Competition editions
- One edition per year.
- Typical cup
- Chocolate and dried fruit through the middle of the range; the Santa Barbara high farms produce markedly brighter, more complex lots.
Varieties recorded here
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Parainema
Honduran-bred, rust-resistant, and the 2026 national competition winner at 89.14 points.