Founder · Q-grader · Cup of Excellence international juror
Jordan Dabov
The person who brought the world's most demanding specialty coffee competition home to Bulgaria — and who personally selects every lot in our catalog.
Jordan Dabov is one of the leading specialty coffee experts in Europe. He sits on the international jury of the Cup of Excellence — the most respected competition in the industry — is a licensed Q-grader (the SCA's certified coffee-quality evaluator), and is the founder of DABOV Specialty Coffee, the brand he launched in 2014.
If one person could be credited with bringing the modern specialty coffee culture to Bulgaria, it would be him.
On the jury since 2013
The only Bulgarian on the Cup of Excellence international panel
Since 2013, Jordan has been the only Bulgarian invited to evaluate coffees on the Cup of Excellence international jury. The selection is not a one-off honour — it is a recurring annual responsibility, and only a small number of coffee professionals worldwide are extended the invitation each year.
He has cupped lots and contributed to scoring decisions at country competitions in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, and Ethiopia. The work is intense: a typical week of judging covers 200+ coffees, evaluated blind, against the SCA's 100-point cupping protocol.
2013
First Cup of Excellence jury invitation
7+
Producing countries judged
Q-grader
SCA-licensed quality evaluator
2014
Founded DABOV Specialty Coffee
What a coffee hunter does
From the auction floor to the Bulgarian shelf
Beyond judging, Jordan's working role is coffee hunter — the person who finds, evaluates, and acquires the green coffee that DABOV roasts. The job is half tasting and half logistics: identifying the right producers, building direct relationships, negotiating fair prices, and securing lots through specialised online auctions before they sell out to roasters with deeper pockets.
It is also the part of the job that doesn't show up on a bag label. By the time a coffee reaches your cup, the decisions that determined its quality were made months earlier — at a cupping table on the other side of the world, by someone who had to be sure.
Why it matters
Why a Q-grader on staff changes what shows up in the bag
A licensed Q-grader does not have an opinion about whether a coffee is good. They have a calibrated reading of where it sits on a defined scale. The Q is essentially a series of practical exams — green-grading, sensory acuity, triangulation tests, cupping at the SCA standard — that have to be re-certified every three years. Worldwide there are only a few thousand active Q-graders.
For a specialty roastery, having a Q-grader make the buying decisions is the difference between bringing in coffee that scored 86+ and bringing in coffee that the seller *said* scored 86+. For a customer, the difference shows up in the cup.
"If I cannot tell you the producer's name, the elevation, the cultivar, the processing method, and the score — I would not put it in a bag with our name on it."
Drink the lots Jordan picked
Every single-origin in our catalog passed his cupping table before it landed in our roastery. Browse the current selection.