Each coffee-producing country uses its own grading vocabulary, built around different measures — screen size in Kenya’s AA/AB/PB system, defect count in Ethiopia’s Grade 1 to Grade 5 scale, and bean size paired with growing altitude in Colombia’s Supremo and Excelso classifications. A top grade in one country’s system does not automatically match a top grade in another’s, and assuming otherwise can lead a buyer to expect a cup profile or defect tolerance the lot was never specified against.
Atlas asks every supplier to state both the origin’s local grade and the underlying measurements behind it — screen size, defect count, altitude band and processing method — rather than relying on the grade name alone to compare lots across countries. Buyers moving between origins for the first time should request a side-by-side specification sheet before cupping, so a quality decision is based on the same measured criteria rather than on two different national labels that happen to sound similarly premium.